ALL WALES FISHING BYELAWS INQUIRY 2019

Angling Trust Evidence

Background

Established in 2009, the Angling Trust is the representative body for anglers in England and Wales, with over 2,200 club and fishery owners and 12,000 individuals paying annual membership subscriptions.  Many of these members fish in Wales, and many own or lease fishing rights which have substantial value.

The Angling Trust has opposed the imposition of mandatory catch and release and most method restriction regulations on anglers in England and Wales since they were first mooted by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales respectively in 2014/15.  We have submitted detailed objections to informal and formal consultations and have held several meetings with both organisations to explain our position.  We have taken this position in consultation with our Salmon Anglers Advisory Group, comprising representatives of assorted fishery associations, and based on substantial feedback from our membership and from enquiries from the salmon angling public.  It’s fair to say that there is not unanimous agreement with this position in the angling community, but there is a very significant majority of salmon anglers who are highly resistant to the further regulation of salmon angling that goes beyond the existing byelaws and the substantial voluntary contribution that anglers already make to the conservation of salmon.  We are also opposed to further regulation because we believe it to be illogical, disproportionate and impractical.

On the day of the deadline for submission of this evidence, the Environment Agency has announced that in England it will be encouraging a voluntary approach to catch and release on most rivers in England, with a target of 90%, but it will be banning nearly all commercial netting of salmon.  It will not be imposing blanket mandatory regulations on catch and release or method controls on anglers.  The Angling Trust is pleased that our negotiations with the Environment Agency have been successful in reaching this pragmatic and proportionate set of regulations and commend the Agency on its collaborative approach to reaching an agreement which is largely satisfactory (with some exceptions, such as the Solway rivers where mandatory measures have been imposed against our wishes).

We have found that Natural Resources Wales, in contrast, has not taken such a collaborative or flexible approach to our discussions.  At all times, our attempts at negotiation have been rebuffed by officers who have been intent on proposing a particular suite of regulations and they have been unwilling to amend this in response to our many and various suggestions.  After the inquiry was called, we met with Messrs Dave Mee and Peter Gough to try and reach common ground and we produced a statement setting out the very limited areas where we agree.  However, these areas of agreement are not as the result of any negotiation, or reflective of any flexibility by the regulator, but merely the small intersection between our respective positions regarding a proportionate regulatory approach to salmon and sea trout angling.

The Angling Trust has seen the very substantial evidence submitted by the Campaign for the Protection of Welsh Fisheries and by Mr. John Eardley and we are broadly supportive of both these submissions and the appendices to them.  We do not intend to submit a similar volume of evidence, but instead to highlight some particular points from our perspective as the representative body for anglers.

Catch and Release

Our principal objection to the new regulations concerns the imposition of mandatory catch and release on all rivers in Wales.  We are not opposed to catch and release; indeed we advise anglers to return all salmon except where stocks are healthy enough to sustain exploitation.  However, it is the mandatory nature of the regulations that anglers find objectionable, even if they themselves fully intend to return all the fish they catch to the river.  The angling community would generally prefer to regulate itself on a voluntary basis, given that they are the owners and lessees of the fishing rights, and they play a leading role in maintaining the river environment on a voluntary basis.  They are also the principal funders of the fisheries functions delivered by Natural Resources Wales and the Environment Agency.  It is difficult to explain this concept to non-anglers, but for many game anglers it is very important that they have the right to take a fish, even if they choose not to exercise it for conservation reasons.

In Wales, anglers currently return 86% of the salmon they catch and generally only catch 10-15% of the salmon in a river, so they are responsible for less than 2% of the mortality of adult salmon.  The proportion of fish caught that are released has risen from close to zero as recently as the 1990s and represents a very significant cultural change for the angling community.  NRW has told us that they are frustrated by the slow process of change and that they have tried to encourage greater rates of catch and release in recent years without success. 

We do not believe that NRW has been effective in its communication to anglers over the past few years, relying as it has on distributing the message almost exclusively via Local Fisheries Groups which are not well-attended.  NRW has not made use of the rod licence database to send e-mail messages or letters to anglers and it has not used social media at all effectively.  We believe that it would be entirely feasible for NRW to adopt a similar approach to the Environment Agency in aiming to reach a 90% rate of release through voluntary means and that this has not been given sufficient chance of success. 

We do not believe that a mandatory regulation will be 100% effective; resources for enforcement by NRW are sparse and reducing and the paid officers rely heavily on the voluntary co-operation of angling clubs, fishery owners and peer pressure from other anglers.  This will not be universally forthcoming if the proposed regulations are introduced as most are opposed to them.  Mandatory catch and release would lead to a reduction in angling as many anglers would not fish under those rules, or would fish elsewhere, or would fish less, and so there would be fewer anglers around to provide a deterrent to poachers and the small but significant proportion of anglers who would ignore the new rules and take fish illegally.  Therefore mandatory regulation might actually save fewer fish than a voluntary approach with a 90% target.

The condition of salmon in Welsh rivers is highly variable, with some rivers improving and others deteriorating.  Populations rise, fall and change in a number of cycles, and cycles within cycles, throughout the range of the Atlantic salmon and in individual rivers.  Blanket legislation to cover the whole of Wales for 10 years seems a very blunt instrument of management in this dynamic context, particularly when it was drafted 2 or 3 years before it has any hope of being implemented.

The impact of the proposed regulations on angling activity is likely to be the closure of several angling clubs, and severe damage to businesses which rely on visiting anglers (e.g. tackle shops, campsites, hotels, pubs).

One of the few areas of common ground between the Angling Trust and NRW is that anglers are not the cause of the overall depletion of salmon populations.  Criminalising anglers in Wales for taking a single salmon and damaging the viability of rural businesses and community groups therefore seems a disproportionately heavy handed approach to regulating a sector which is not the cause of the problem, when a light touch (and even a blind eye) are being applied to regulation of other sectors which have a far greater impact on salmon and the natural environment (e.g. agricultural pollution, sewage effluent, habitat damage, hydropower, barriers to migration).

Funding for NRW fisheries has been cut repeatedly and its staff are now much reduced which prevents it being able to provide a credible threat of enforcement against poachers, to assess fish stocks in real time and with the confidence of the angling community, or to take the necessary actions to stop pollution and other damage to the habitat of the Atlantic salmon.  Anglers fund the vast majority of the costs of NRW’s fisheries operations, but their views were largely ignored in the consultations about these proposed regulations, which changed very little between the initial draft and the final version put forward to the Welsh Assembly Government.

The Angling Trust has written to the Cabinet Secretary repeatedly and carried out media campaigns to urge the Welsh Assembly Government to bring in regulations and credible enforcement to tackle agricultural pollution which has repeatedly been identified as the principal cause of poor water quality and habitat degradation in Wales, which are directly linked to salmon populations.   Whilst we welcomed the Welsh Government’s announcement in autumn 2018 that it intends to introduce new regulations in this area, there are three key areas of concern about the announcement:

1. There is no mention of new regulations to prevent soil erosion; many rivers are being smothered in sediment as a result of poor soil management associated particularly with over-grazing, and with stubble turnip, maize and winter wheat crops.  This directly impacts on the recruitment success of salmon and sea trout.
2. Resources for enforcement have been cut repeatedly over the past decade and there will need to be substantial investment in additional resources for the environmental regulator if these new regulations are to have the desired effect.  A re-organisation of NRW has recently been announced which will involve a further marked reduction in staff and so there is little confidence among anglers that such a credible enforcement threat will be in place;
3. The new regulations will not be in place until January 2020 and will have transitional periods to allow farmers time to adapt, which may mean that the benefits will not be felt for several years and a number of rivers in Wales are already at risk of ecological collapse after decades of inaction.

This gradual, partial and ineffective regulation of the most polluting industry in Wales – which does far more damage to adult and juvenile salmon than anglers – is in stark contrast to the proposed immediate 100% ban on anglers taking a single fish in the season and banning certain methods of fishing which have been practised for centuries.

Anglers, and the Angling Trust, have been demanding greater freedom to control numbers of cormorants and goosanders on rivers and lakes in Wales for many years without success.  These birds have a very substantial impact on juvenile fish numbers and yet there has been no change in policy to allow clubs and fisheries to manage unsustainable predation from these birds at their own expense.  A review group has been set up to look at this issue, which is welcome, and the Angling Trust is participating in the group, but it has uncertain outcomes with an uncertain timetable.  Action should have been taken many years ago in response to anglers’ concerns and until it is taken the regulation of angling again feels like the wrong target.

In summary, anglers feel as if the regulator is taking a sledgehammer to crack a very small nut by proposing the regulation of anglers, but it is not taking any meaningful action to address the much larger impacts on salmon populations.

Method controls

We support the evidence submitted by the CPWF regarding the disproportionate effect of a ban on fishing with a worm on small spate rivers in many parts of Wales.  The number of fish saved by this ban would be extremely small, but the impact on cultures and angling communities could be very severe.

We do support the replacement of treble hooks on flying ‘C’ lures with single hooks because this would be relatively easy or anglers and the tackle industry to adapt to, and there is reasonable anecdotal evidence that it would prevent the unintentional death of some salmon.

Data and evidence

There is a lack of confidence in, and understand of, the classification system used by Natural Resources Wales to assess stocks.  The CPWF has set out in considerable detail the nature of its concerns with the validity of a number of the assessment and modelling methodologies and the statistical basis of these.  The Angling Trust has raised this issue with NRW since the inquiry was called and we believe that the timescale for implementation of a review of these methodologies is too long, particularly in the context of imminent regulations being imposed on anglers which are based on stock assessments. 

While there is no doubt that there has been a severe decline in salmon numbers strategically in Wales and for much of the Atlantic salmon’s range in the past decades, there is poor confidence in the assessment of stocks on particular rivers and past performance of predictions has been very poor. 

This hinders the present and future effective management of salmon, and provides a frail foundation for the implementation of mandatory measures to regulate anglers.  Given that anglers’ rod catch is a key factor in assessment of stocks, another unintended consequence of the proposed regulations will be to introduce even greater uncertainty to the statistical models, because the behaviour of anglers will change in unpredictable ways, thereby affecting catch reports and angling effort, among other factors.

We hope that this concise summary of our position will be helpful to the Inspector and look forward to presenting our case in person in January.

ENDS