news/editorial

10 May 2015 News/Editorial

Those readers who have been good enough to stay with it these last few weeks, will be pleased to know that this is the last on the dreaded subject of licences to kill, tagging…. and all that.

There is one aspect of the recent licensing and tagging consultation, mercifully just ended, that has been lost in the detail of arguments, both for and against.

Can compelling people to do something ever be justified without providing the evidence, which stands up to detailed and expert scrutiny, as to why?

If there is one thing that is clear from everything that has been written, it is that nobody has been able to provide any evidence that rods killing salmon at current levels is damaging the stock. It may be true of one or two rivers somewhere, I know not where, but you cannot punish 99% on the basis that 1% are being bad boys.

My headmaster at Aysgarth in Yorkshire beat the whole school (over 100 of us and I had just arrived, 8 years old) in 1958 because one boy had done something unspeakable, and nobody would confess…...so he beat every single boy. The same headmaster, if he tried that now, would end up in jail.

So we can dismiss the “rods killing fish damages the stock” argument, and to add yet more conviction to that, we now know that 82% of rod caught fish were released in 2014, and I would be surprised if that %age does not go up again in 2015.

The, as yet unchallenged, evidence is that rods currently kill under 5% of the salmon run, leaving well over 95% to spawn.

When Andrew Thin said in front of the Parliamentary Committee that rods killing salmon was a “significant factor” in the decline of salmon runs, he was wrong, indeed far from “significant”, it is not a factor at all, and he should admit it……. or at least if he still thinks he is right, he should prove it. Indeed, if his whole recommended policy of licensing, tagging and quotas for rods is based on that assertion, I would argue it invalidates the whole policy.

Can you justify compelling the rods to do something when the only reason for that is because somebody else, it is asserted, is doing something wrong...viz opening up dormant netting stations, catching salmon in mixed stock nets, and generally, so the assertion goes, overexploiting the stock by netting and killing salmon in an unsustainable manner?

I am no lawyer, but just as my headmaster was wrong, so Government will be open to challenge if it imposes something on the whole rod fishing community for no provable purpose….other than somebody else is doing something which they want to stop.

As I understand it, when an angler, fishing legally, either because he/she is a salmon fishery proprietor, or is fishing by express permission of such a proprietor, catches a salmon, then, and only then, that salmon becomes, by law, their property. The angler can only take possession of his property, ie the salmon he/she has caught, by killing it. Once released, it ceases to be his/her property.

What the Government appears to be proposing, for no provable conservation reason in the case of the rod angler, is either depriving him/her completely of the right to enjoy his/her property or limiting his/her right to take possession of and enjoy his property (by the imposition of licensing, quotas and carcass tagging)

The (moral and) legal question is whether the Government can impose this, without cause?

“There you go again, the Tweed being awkward, not being a team player” I hear some cry, but if I am right about other rivers’ responses, and despite S&TA thinking everyone supports them…..it might not necessarily be so, and I hope the excellent Spey does not mind me identifying them as one, the Tay also giving not exactly wholehearted approval.

They are to be commended for taking decisions, like the Tweed, on the basis of good science.

My headmaster should have ended up in court; perhaps somebody can tell me the difference in principle between him and what is proposed here?

If you have no provable case for doing something, my advice would be….don’t do it.

I still think there is a compromise, short of full quotas and tagging for the rods, but is anyone in Government prepared to listen?

I hope so….but I fear not.