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A Clash of Interests
I think Billy Connelly summed up conflict of interest issues well in a joke he told about a wee Celtic supporter who found himself in the Rangers end of the football ground suffering endless humiliation throughout the match, including having to take his shoes of to go and fetch the half time pies for some surly bears. The wee man had his revenge with the punch line that sectarianism at football matches would end ‘when they stoap sh***** ing our shoes - we’ll stoap p****** ing their pies’.
Fishing, whether with a rod and line or on an industrial scale certainly generates conflict with conservation pressure groups as does our angling interests clash with those of the nets men. Indeed conflicts of interest are usually so convoluted that ‘abusers’ often have years of grace before action is taken because no one will make a decision for fear of losing votes or upsetting vested interests, hence the Irish nets carried on their trade with impunity and profit until people like Brian Marshall, Naill Greene and Ori Vigfusson had their winning way.
Where does it all go wrong, I wonder, that we have to come to the brink of disaster on every occasion before sensible action is taken? I doubt the nets men want the salmon to become extinct, anglers do not want the fish wiped out. One solution mooted by nets men and anglers is to shoot the seals making more fish available for commercial and sporting exploitation. This agenda of draconian measures seems to be self perpetuating. We know large scale cull is unacceptable to the majority if the public yet we continue to alienate the masses with the unabated cry for blood. On the other side of the coin conservationists want to protect wild life like inland nesting cormorants, paying little heed to the financial burden cormorant predation has on fisheries. Sadly the list of complaints from all quarters seems to be endless, a list full of indifference to reality and simple commonsense.
A large part of the problem stems from the fact that conservation is a long term project seeking to allow nature to achieve a proper balance after years of human mismanagement of the environment. Fishing and netting interests are focused on what is happening now, with the attached self interest. There is a fundamental polarity in this which, to some extent, inhibits respect and understanding of each others aspirations.
As we stand today we face the question of whether or not to cull with regard to seals and cormorants. Not so long ago I watched a documentary about some conservationists trying to catch a very large crocodile in Africa that had taken to eating people. They spent an inordinate amount of time and money trying to capture the beast alive. In the meantime the croc ate someone else. It seems to me that in this case conservation effort went too far. Never was there a clearer case for a judiciously placed bullet!
I am aware that this is a rather extreme example of, in my view, taking the preservation of animal life too far but the question of whether to kill, capture or scare off needs to be resolved right quickly.
On the other side of the coin angling interests have taken an equally blinkered view of protecting their interests. Otters became endangered because it was believed that they killed salmon. Wild brown trout were electro-fished out of spawning grounds because it was believed they were in competition with salmon for redds and food. The stupidity of all of this killing is obvious, it served no useful purpose. Otters prefer eels to salmon and sea trout numbers (brown trout that run to sea) are in decline partly due to the stupidity, historically I hope, of killing trout to reduce competition with salmon. The traditional angling knee jerk reaction of reaching for the gun to deal with wildlife issues convergent with our interests is foolish and generally counter productive.
I for one
would not support a large scale cull of seals nor the shooting of
all inland cormorants (it is estimated that 60,000 cormorants would
have to be shot across Europe to make a difference).
Standing on the pier at Eyemouth recently I watch a resident group
of seals cavorting in the water. A big males surfaced with something
that looked suspiciously like a finnock, but looking into those big
eyes I couldn't be grudge him his snack. I would support
regulations that make it easier in certain conditions to minimise
the damage to fish stock by species that are not on the endangered
list. It holds therefore that conservation interests should be less
‘flexible’ in applying the endangered species umbrella to just about
anything that has fur, feathers or chlorophyll.
Again in the interests of balance I would observe that angling interests are culpable in the many abuses that continue on our rivers by adopting the Nelson Approach – turning a blind eye to flagrant abuse and excess. Playing our part in conservation means that we should be dealing with the sneaks who quietly kill hen salmon and unseasonal fish or exceed catch limits, furtively secreting salmon in their car boots against all conservation guidelines. Angling needs to be seen to have its house in order across the board. We as an angling fraternity must accept that other water environment users have rights, as do the indigenous flora and fauna that live in and around our rivers and lochs, to share in the bounty nature provides.
In the following series of articles I intend to raise some of the issues touched on above purely with a view to and adding to the debate. If conservation and angling interests are to get along side by side there has to be an accommodation, a giving of ground on both sides. There is an ecological paradigm that no two species competing for the same niche can survive together without the weaker species being ousted. As with the wee man at the football match if resorting to guerrilla warfare and pissing in the pies of the opposition is all we are capable of, the unequal struggle will continue to its inevitable conclusion because I recon angling is the weaker of the species. We live in a world that contains too much superficiality. The walker, the casual bird watcher or seal spotter relates to what he or she sees. The rippling surface of a loch or sparkling stream are all that the eye of the non angler sees, they have little curiosity or empathy for what swims beneath. It is the surface values that the generality attach too, not that which they more than likely only ever see on the fishmongers slab. In which case it is safer and better for us to communicate with contrary interests to reach an that accommodation and maybe educate them to the beauty and timelessness of what lies beneath the surface of angling rather than to entrench with the gun to take an indiscriminate pop at wildlife.
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