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Government gives go ahead for New Cormorant and Goosander Management Plan

Steve Stringer said:
Alex,

Firstly my questions were addressed to Neil Blood who says he has practical experience of culling cormorants using firearms. He has chosen not to reply to date regarding the effectiveness of the culling or the actual weapons used.

It is also because I DO know something about shooting that I question the practicality of clubs arming some of their members. Drawing comparisons with shooting pigeons and crows on private farms and estates and doing the same on fisheries, many with public access, is totally irresponsible.

It is because I DO know something about shooting that I understand the limitations of a shotgun regarding its suitability to dispatch cormorants due to its range limitations. On my local waters a shot would have to be taken at a range of up to 60 to 100 yards, a fat lot of good a shotgun would be.

However all the above detracts from my main point which is that it would not be practically possible to deploy sufficient trained people on enough waters SAFELY to make the slightest difference to the cormorant problem. All this gung ho talk of giving clubs the legal ability to blast away at will is completely unworkable. An accident is not only possible, but inevitable, and then we would be back to square one with culling outlawed again and the reputation of angling worse than it already is with the general public

Steve
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Steve

I appreciate your questions were addressed to Neil but this is an open forum. If you do not want other members to comment on what you write then you could always just PM the person you are addressing.

I do not agree that it is necessarily totally irresponsible to allowing shooting people to cull cormorants on waters as long as the proper sfatey measures are in place. And a comparison with shooting pigeons and crows is absolutely relevant because I was not advocating a free for all along a tow path as you seem to imply. Of course if that were to happen then it would be unsafe. I realise some of the birds would be beyond the range of a shotgun but that does not mean they would all be. Shooting can act as a deterrent as well as reducing numbers

You are claiming it would not work at all. I think, under the correct circumstances and organisation it would work. So we have to disagree on this point.
 
7 pages of people nitpicking and "my view is more important than yours"

This is why I believe that "we" as anglers will never be one voice for the good and benefit of our sport. Too many using it as a tool for themselves and there self promotion.

I'm off fishing.

Nick.
 
Chris Jones said:
Steve,
it depends entirely on the circumstances. Fishing clubs don't generally own anything, so it's not within their remit to grant shooting permission. I do know of clubs that have the agreement of the landowner to shoot. They take their alloted quotas with no problem whatsoever. For others, for a multitude of different reasons, there's not a chance of them getting permission to shoot, they sensibly don't even make the application to cull, there would be no point.

As to the rest, perhaps I would have been better off not responding to your ridiculously ill informed post. Please yourself what you think of me, you patently know very little about shooting or the laws that restrict it. For that reason, your previous post qualifies as asinine in a way that mine never could. I can only suggest that you get yourself informed with reality before talking complete cackbabble on a subject you are demonstrating admirably that you know very little about.
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Chris,

I cannot begin to apologise to you enough. Until a read your post I though I was just another regular angler, but it turns out I am an ill informed person that spouts something called cackbabble. I now feel shallow and useless but I thank you, as a self appointed higher intelligence, for pointing out the error of my ways. I'm sure that many other deluded people on this forum would also like me to thank you for your incisive wisdom.

Steve
 
Steve Stringer said:
Chris,

I cannot begin to apologise to you enough. Until a read your post I though I was just another regular angler, but it turns out I am an ill informed person that spouts something called cackbabble. I now feel shallow and useless but I thank you, as a self appointed higher intelligence, for pointing out the error of my ways. I'm sure that many other deluded people on this forum would also like me to thank you for your incisive wisdom.

Steve
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No need to apologise and I certainly don't consider myself of higher intelligence. I don't doubt that you are very intelligent bloke, I just find it nigh on impossible to believe that you actually know anything much about shooting. Your posts suggest otherwise.

Good luck with your fishing. Should you venture into shooting, I do hope you manage to get yourself better informed, lest you end up in trouble with the law.
 
Nick Anderson said:
7 pages of people nitpicking and "my view is more important than yours"

This is why I believe that "we" as anglers will never be one voice for the good and benefit of our sport. Too many using it as a tool for themselves and there self promotion.

I'm off fishing.

Nick.
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Is that not what you are doing with this post? You can level that accusation at any thread on the forum Nick. People have differing opinions and post them. That's what a forum is.
 
Nick Anderson said:
7 pages of people nitpicking and "my view is more important than yours"

This is why I believe that "we" as anglers will never be one voice for the good and benefit of our sport. Too many using it as a tool for themselves and there self promotion.

I'm off fishing.

Nick.
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As you have offered nothing of value to this debate, merely criticising those who are at least trying....then I think the only person who actually is "using it as a tool for themselves and there self promotion"....is you yourself.

If you don't wish to take part in this debate, beyond unpleasant, irrelevant comments, then why not try to find somewhere where people actually want to listen to that sort of thing? Good luck with your search.

Cheers, Dave.
 
Graham Young said:
To be honest Joe I wasn't trying to be logical, I was just playing devils advocate and seeing where it went.

I have seen waters suffer from the introduction of Zander but all that I know of have recovered from the initial predator/prey imbalance that may have been created. some of them are better waters than they were before the Zander were there.

As David has said once they are in (and that includes anything under the water) it is impossible to remove them, cormorants on the other hand may be able to be controlled but IMO if they are put on general licence.
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Graham is here another interesting point ? You say Cormorants my be easy to control ?

According to the RSPB there are 41,000 wintering Cormorants in the UK
Also the RSPB state there are 9,000 breeding pairs in the UK .
In the nesting season Cormorants lay 2-4 eggs and assuming they lay only one clutch per season and 50% of the eggs hatch and the chicks survive ?
By the the end of this year and if my sums are correct ?
There could be a extra 18,000 birds added to the population

According the the Angling Trust they have a quota of 3,000 birds for 2014/15
Even if they reach that quota ? Do the sums your self and work out how much of a impact 3,000 will have on the rest of the population ?
 
Joe Fletcher said:
Graham is here another interesting point ? You say Cormorants my be easy to control ?

According to the RSPB there are 41,000 wintering Cormorants in the UK
Also the RSPB state there are 9,000 breeding pairs in the UK .
In the nesting season Cormorants lay 2-4 eggs and assuming they lay only one clutch per season and 50% of the eggs hatch and the chicks survive ?
By the the end of this year and if my sums are correct ?
There could be a extra 18,000 birds added to the population

According the the Angling Trust they have a quota of 3,000 birds for 2014/15
Even if they reach that quota ? Do the sums your self and work out how much of a impact 3,000 will have on the rest of the population ?
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Agree entirely Joe that's why I said "may be able to be controlled" I fear its to late no matter what the trust does, perhaps oiling eggs is a proposition then none would hatch, perhaps we should eat them, anyone know what they taste like?
 
David Gauntlett said:
As you have offered nothing of value to this debate, merely criticising those who are at least trying....then I think the only person who actually is "using it as a tool for themselves and there self promotion"....is you yourself.

If you don't wish to take part in this debate, beyond unpleasant, irrelevant comments, then why not try to find somewhere where people actually want to listen to that sort of thing? Good luck with your search.

Cheers, Dave.
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Don't know who rattled your cage mate but nothing has been achieved on this post, debates are when two or more parties offer their sides and views to come to a joint opinion of how to move forward.
Read from the beginning, digest!
 
Nick Anderson said:
Don't know who rattled your cage mate but nothing has been achieved on this post, debates are when two or more parties offer their sides and views to come to a joint opinion of how to move forward.
Read from the beginning, digest!
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I think that mostly this has been a debate, people putting forward their point of view.
 
Nick, I don't need to read and digest the whole thread from the beginning...I was part of it from the beginning. I believe strongly that we MUST debate these issues on forums....and I don't think you will find many barbel forums bigger than this one to air your views on. As you say, we must at least attempt to come to some sort of compromise, a middle of the road agreement to allow us as anglers to present a unified front to the powers that be.

Why you seem to think this thread is NOT a debate, when it meets every one of your own criteria as to what constitutes a debate....is quite beyond me. Your own contribution doesn't really meet those criteria, it's true. Two digs at the AT, with no constructive thoughts to follow them up, followed by a few sarcastic digs at other peoples efforts....doesn't add a lot to anything really does it, if you think about it......

Whatever Nick...we all see and do things our own way I guess. I have no wish to turn this debate into a slanging match....that really will get us nowhere.

Cheers, Dave.
 
I think we have to congratulate the AT for their achievement in making progress to address a specific problem; inland cormorant predation, rather than be sidetracked into a smug, self defeating ney antagonistic verbal masturbation show from nick A and Graham. All they want is an argument and like Dave says they should find it somewhere else. Just my opinion by the way. Yours truly nick who is fed up with proper topics being hijacked by people with a personal/vitriolic agenda. Ps never post late at night on a phone after a beer.
 
Nick Clark said:
I think we have to congratulate the AT for their achievement in making progress to address a specific problem; inland cormorant predation, rather than be sidetracked into a smug, self defeating ney antagonistic verbal masturbation show from nick A and Graham. All they want is an argument and like Dave says they should find it somewhere else. Just my opinion by the way. Yours truly nick who is fed up with proper topics being hijacked by people with a personal/vitriolic agenda. Ps never post late at night on a phone after a beer.
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What on earth are you on about? how you can say I have been looking for an argument I really do not know, any posts I have made on this thread have done nothing but put my point of view, is that not the point of a forum? I have asked questions and been given answers about things I was lacking knowledge of.

There have been some extremely small spats in this thread none of which have I been involved in, I have no personal agenda and to be honest your post could quite easily cause a row.

I am not an angler that thinks the AT is the be all and end all just because they are all we have, I was a member I am not now, they have done some good things some bad and I will say again I wont go into my reasons as it always ends up with posts that are argumentative.

I would like you to point out where my posts have been vitriolic, personal or antagonistic please.
 
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