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Otter Devestation??

Hi Everyone,
Fishing on many Rivers has changed for many reasons, one being the reintroduction of the Otter..
Calling for any legal cull etc, is absolutely a complete waste of everyones efforts, which includes myself in the past..
The Otter is now probably the most popular wild animal in the British Isles, adored, and capturing the imagination of MILLIONS who love seeing them swimming in the rivers on any TV channel.
MILLIONS will 100% completely be outraged if ANY sort of Cull is put before Parliament because a very small part of the population don't like them..
We might not Kill what we catch but we do put sharp bits of metal in to a living creatures mouth..
That's how the public will see it..
IMO we will never get most people to understand why we go fishing, how many times have people on here been asked if you kill or eat what you catch?, I have personally lost count.!..
The Otter will remain protected by Law for many years to come, nothing lawfully will ever be sanctioned by ANY political party, and that im afraid to say is the end of the arguament before it ever begins..
 
Craig Wood said:
Hi Everyone,
Fishing on many Rivers has changed for many reasons, one being the reintroduction of the Otter..
Calling for any legal cull etc, is absolutely a complete waste of everyones efforts, which includes myself in the past..
The Otter is now probably the most popular wild animal in the British Isles, adored, and capturing the imagination of MILLIONS who love seeing them swimming in the rivers on any TV channel.
MILLIONS will 100% completely be outraged if ANY sort of Cull is put before Parliament because a very small part of the population don't like them..
We might not Kill what we catch but we do put sharp bits of metal in to a living creatures mouth..
That's how the public will see it..
IMO we will never get most people to understand why we go fishing, how many times have people on here been asked if you kill or eat what you catch?, I have personally lost count.!..
The Otter will remain protected by Law for many years to come, nothing lawfully will ever be sanctioned by ANY political party, and that im afraid to say is the end of the arguament before it ever begins..
Click to expand...

MILLIONS of people said exactly the same about that old Springwatch favourite the Badger and look whats just happened to them...............:rolleyes:
 
How about fish farming Rhys....or doesn't that count?

If fish farms are not being damaged (some have been) then that is either because the owners are taking things into their own hands...or they are 'otter proof' fenced, at the owners expense.

So....why were dairy/cattle farmers not told to 'badger proof' fence their land, and leave the badgers alone?

Cheers, Dave.
 
David Gauntlett said:
How about fish farming Rhys....or doesn't that count?

If fish farms are not being damaged (some have been) then that is either because the owners are taking things into their own hands...or they are 'otter proof' fenced, at the owners expense.

So....why were dairy/cattle farmers not told to 'badger proof' fence their land, and leave the badgers alone?

Cheers, Dave.
Click to expand...

David building fences would not make any difference , Bovine TB is a air born bacteria :rolleyes:
 
Joe Fletcher said:
David building fences would not make any difference , Bovine TB is a air born bacteria :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Joe, my 'fencing cattle herds in' thing was really just a tongue in cheek comment, based on the fact that fencing IS the only alternative offered to fish farmers, fishery owners, angling clubs etc. That despite the fact that numbers of such folk have had their businesses and livings destroyed as a direct result of otter predation. Having said that, it is not a completely daft idea, in view of the following extract from an official paper.

How is bovine TB spread?

There is still some uncertainty surrounding bTB and the way it is transmitted though it is spread primarily through the exchange of respiratory secretions between infected and uninfected animals. This transmission usually happens when animals are in close contact with each other. Bacteria released into the air through coughing and sneezing are inhaled by uninfected animals and the disease is able to spread.

From that it would seem that CLOSE contact is required for airborne transmission to take place (much like the common cold in humans). So...if the farms were effectively fenced (even double fenced if need be)....how are the badgers going to get 'in close contact' to spread the disease? Even supposing it is them that are spreading it, which has still not been conclusively proven.

The fact is the government is not deeply disturbed by the Bovine TB problem, they do not see it as an emergency that requires endless funds on research to eradicate it quickly. They have obviously decided that it's easier to just compensate farmers when infected animals are compulsorily slaughtered...and kill a couple of thousand badgers when said farmers get too uppity about the situation. The total expenditure over the past five years to develop a vaccine to solve the problem was under £25,000,000.

Now that seems quite a lot to you and I, but when the estimated cost of the latest badger cull was above £7,000,000 (i.e, quite a lot more than the yearly spend on the vaccination research programme) then the realities of their priorities becomes evident. Even more telling....despite that massive cost of this latest cull, there was NO routine testing done on the culled badger carcasses to detect the presence (or otherwise) of the disease. From that, it doesn't need an Einstein to work out that the cull was never intended to serve any purpose, other than to keep the farmers happy until the vaccine is ready.

In other words, the government are quite willing to spend millions of pounds to kill considerable numbers of badgers...and importantly to us, more than happy to weather the huge public protests that will inevitably follow that...just to achieve a temporary 'patch' until the cure for the bovine TB problem is released...which apparently is not far off.

That being so...why on earth is it considered by some on this forum to be a suicidal madness for the angling fraternity to even talk about something being done to address the predation problem that is destroying or at the very least seriously affecting fisheries all over the country?????

OK, just playing devils advocate there, just trying to prove a point. I do NOT support mass killing of badgers, rather that other available means of controlling badger numbers be temporarily employed until the underlying problems are solved, and our rivers are returned to a state where they are able to support them.

That would not only be measures taken to reduce pollution and over abstraction etc., but also would include research into possible means of ridding our waters of the pestilential non native crayfish. These animals are carriers of the fungus 'Aphanomyces astaci', which is wiping out our native crays because they have no natural immunity to it. How hard would it be to develop a variant of that which the invasive species in turn would have no defences against? Or some similar method of destroying them? DEFRA are tackling and reasonably effectively eradicating other 'invasive alien species', such as top mouth gudgeon...why not alien crayfish? They are also killing off certain species of alien bird life (Sacred ibis and Egyptian crows for starters)....why then are the invading cormorant species which are swelling the ranks of our native birds to ridiculous numbers not being tackled, other than offering a DIY method by granting difficult to obtain licences to shoot ANY cormorants, to interested bodies?

Oh well......whatever :rolleyes:

Cheers, Dave.
 
David Gauntlett said:
Joe, my 'fencing cattle herds in' thing was really just a tongue in cheek comment, based on the fact that fencing IS the only alternative offered to fish farmers, fishery owners, angling clubs etc. That despite the fact that numbers of such folk have had their businesses and livings destroyed as a direct result of otter predation. Having said that, it is not a completely daft idea, in view of the following extract from an official paper.

How is bovine TB spread?

There is still some uncertainty surrounding bTB and the way it is transmitted though it is spread primarily through the exchange of respiratory secretions between infected and uninfected animals. This transmission usually happens when animals are in close contact with each other. Bacteria released into the air through coughing and sneezing are inhaled by uninfected animals and the disease is able to spread.

From that it would seem that CLOSE contact is required for airborne transmission to take place (much like the common cold in humans). So...if the farms were effectively fenced (even double fenced if need be)....how are the badgers going to get 'in close contact' to spread the disease? Even supposing it is them that are spreading it, which has still not been conclusively proven.

The fact is the government is not deeply disturbed by the Bovine TB problem, they do not see it as an emergency that requires endless funds on research to eradicate it quickly. They have obviously decided that it's easier to just compensate farmers when infected animals are compulsorily slaughtered...and kill a couple of thousand badgers when said farmers get too uppity about the situation. The total expenditure over the past five years to develop a vaccine to solve the problem was under £25,000,000.

Now that seems quite a lot to you and I, but when the estimated cost of the latest badger cull was above £7,000,000 (i.e, quite a lot more than the yearly spend on the vaccination research programme) then the realities of their priorities becomes evident. Even more telling....despite that massive cost of this latest cull, there was NO routine testing done on the culled badger carcasses to detect the presence (or otherwise) of the disease. From that, it doesn't need an Einstein to work out that the cull was never intended to serve any purpose, other than to keep the farmers happy until the vaccine is ready.

In other words, the government are quite willing to spend millions of pounds to kill considerable numbers of badgers...and importantly to us, more than happy to weather the huge public protests that will inevitably follow that...just to achieve a temporary 'patch' until the cure for the bovine TB problem is released...which apparently is not far off.

That being so...why on earth is it considered by some on this forum to be a suicidal madness for the angling fraternity to even talk about something being done to address the predation problem that is destroying or at the very least seriously affecting fisheries all over the country?????

OK, just playing devils advocate there, just trying to prove a point. I do NOT support mass killing of badgers, rather that other available means of controlling badger numbers be temporarily employed until the underlying problems are solved, and our rivers are returned to a state where they are able to support them.

That would not only be measures taken to reduce pollution and over abstraction etc., but also would include research into possible means of ridding our waters of the pestilential non native crayfish. These animals are carriers of the fungus 'Aphanomyces astaci', which is wiping out our native crays because they have no natural immunity to it. How hard would it be to develop a variant of that which the invasive species in turn would have no defences against? Or some similar method of destroying them? DEFRA are tackling and reasonably effectively eradicating other 'invasive alien species', such as top mouth gudgeon...why not alien crayfish? They are also killing off certain species of alien bird life (Sacred ibis and Egyptian crows for starters)....why then are the invading cormorant species which are swelling the ranks of our native birds to ridiculous numbers not being tackled, other than offering a DIY method by granting difficult to obtain licences to shoot ANY cormorants, to interested bodies?

Oh well......whatever :rolleyes:

Cheers, Dave.
Click to expand...


David how could you fence a farm of ? Are you saying keep the cows out of the fields ?
David let me ask you question .
Are you in favour of a total cull of Otters or just thin them out ?
Assuming you just want to thin them out ? Once you have removed Otters from one area , Whats to stop other Otters from another area moving in to that area you have just removed them from ?
So do you think that over a period of time any thing would change ? In a short space of time you would be back to where you first started before you removed /culled the first Otter ?

David here is another question for you ? If we as Anglers are allowed to cull Otters ? Do you think Game keepers should be allowed to cull birds of prey because they are taking a few Grouse ? Pheasant ?
 
On pleasant, summer days, the nice men in white coats (who look after myself and others in our home for distressed aged anglers) loosen our straight jackets and sit us in deck chairs on the lawn outside our locked ward. Whilst soaking up the sun’s warm rays the other day, I found myself pondering recent offerings from BFW’s illustrious contributors regarding various predatory creatures and the culling of badgers. Anyway, not to beat about the bush – my imagination went into overdrive and, as with Baldrick in the Black Adder series, I found myself formulating a ‘cunning plan’.

The plan involves gathering together a group of barbel anglers – not just any old anglers but eminent ones endowed with great scientific and engineering knowledge. They would construct a spaceship capable of travelling zillions of miles at great speed across the cosmos to unknown galaxies way beyond the known universe. The crew would of course comprise the anglers who designed and constructed the ship together with a group of very nubile lady anglers.

Just like in the film ‘Planet of the Apes’ the ship would arrive back on Earth many light years in the future. Now here’s the good bit – instead of apes, the Earth will be populated by man-sized badgers. It gets even better though – these hyper-intelligent badger creatures would be extremely picky eaters, (like pandas that only eat bamboo) but in the badgers’ case, their particular preference would be exclusively for goosanders, cormorants and otters – good eh! This is where my cunning plan gets even more cunninger! The arrival of the spaceship back on Earth would coincide with the badgers having finally consumed the entire planet’s river predators. This in turn would mean that the badgers would inevitably die of starvation and since the goosanders, cormorants and otters will also have ceased to exist, all our rivers would now contain massive shoals of barbel which will have mutated so that an average fish would weigh in excess of 50lbs.

The lucky crew of the returning spaceship would therefore be able to enjoy sport that would be unimaginable to present day anglers! Nobody would blank in this fishermen’s paradise. Even novice anglers would get pictures of themselves in Angling Times posing with monster fish, without having to shell out hundreds of pounds to fish exclusive syndicate stretches of southern rivers.

The final part of my futuristic vision would also mean that our dear planet would need to be re-populated. So the idyllic scenario of catching gargantuan barbel would need to interspersed with copious amounts of carnal activity with the nubile female anglers who were included as part of the original crew.

So there you have it – the perfect solution to all our current woes. An ideological world where people spend all day, every day, doing nothing more than catching big barbel and having sex. Oh, I nearly forgot – instead of boring old rain, precipitation of this brave new world would of course be Old Speckled Hen, crafted fine ale!

So come on all you whingers – who knows how to build a space ship?
​
 
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