news/editorial

25 February 2018 News/Editorial

With 24 salmon and 6 sea trout caught last week, 61 salmon and 9 sea trout for the season so far, with only three fishing days left, February has shown us that there are not many salmon in the river, yet.

The same seems to be true of the Tay and the Dee.

With cold, wintry, sometimes really extreme, conditions forecast for the next 3 weeks, until mid March at least, perhaps the salmon know that they are better off staying, and eating, in the warmer/less cold sea, as opposed to skulking, and dieting, in the depths of some icey Tweed dub.

You can see their point.

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The trouble with people like me, and quite possibly people like you, is that we are misunderstood, even disliked, by the great majority of those who live in these islands.

Let me explain.

I like badgers….. but not when there are so many that they have killed all my hedgehogs. The last one I saw here was in 2016, whereas when we first came here there were signs of them all over my lawn, and my dogs would find, and bark futilely at, them almost every evening. Now we have badgers everywhere, and quite apart from killing all our hedgehogs, they dig up my garden looking for food.

I like sparrowhawks…... but not when there are so many of them that they kill the little birds which we feed all winter. When I walk around here, I am forever finding little puffs of feathers on the ground where yet another blue tit, blackbird or nuthatch has met an untimely end.

I like buzzards……...but have never felt quite the same about them since my father saw one catch and kill a red squirrel, which are not exactly plentiful in these parts. The RSPB now estimates between 57,000 and 79,000 breeding pairs of buzzards in the UK, or between 114,000 and 158,000 individual birds, truly staggering, and increasing, numbers.

I like goosanders and cormorants…….. but not when there are so many that they threaten the numbers, some would say the very existence, of a species under pressure, as maybe never before, the Atlantic salmon.

I even like beavers…….they are cuddly, cute and have just been given legal protection…… but not when there are so many of them, as there will be in time, that they cut down all our young trees and block Tweed’s spawning streams with dams.

I like seals……..but not when there are so many of them that they threaten other UK fish species, including salmon. In 1914 their numbers were down to 500, by year 2000 there were 124,300, and now in 2018 there are over 200,000 around our shores.

There are two common themes in all this.

First, that all these birds and animals occupy the top of their particular food chains, so that whereas they feed on those below them, nobody/nothing feeds on, or controls, them. Protected from control by humans, their numbers increase unchecked until they become an existential threat/ problem to the other species on which they either feed, or adversely affect by their behaviour.

Secondly, that those (hedgehogs, small songbirds, young salmonids, other fish and other birds/mammals) which are so adversely affected by such unchecked proliferation of their predators, are routinely left undefended, ignored and, for the most part, unseen (viz young salmonids and other fish killed and eaten underwater; song (and other) birds taken by sparrowhawks and other raptors, in the open countryside, when no one is looking; hedgehogs attacked at night by badgers). The slaughter happens out of sight, so the great British public thinks that seals are cuddly, and goosanders nicely coloured, wholly ignorant of the devastation they cause, when their numbers explode unchecked, to the numbers of those they eat for lunch.

The answer, of course, is an agreed management and control protocol for each species which has proliferated to the point where it itself represents a danger to others.

This will necessarily mean both controlling further expansion of numbers, and some form of protection to those fish, birds and mammals on which they predate.

The trouble is that, even if you and I believe that humans controlling/killing some of these “out of control” species, is essential and sensible, a no brainer, I’m not sure how many of the largely urbanised UK population and their politicians will agree with us? They have a “fluffy” view of nature, protected by their concrete jungles from the harsh realities of wildlife in the raw. Most likely they will continue to think that you and I are barbarous murderers (“the nasty brigade” as one Chris Packham is supposed to have called anyone who shoots anything) for wanting to control those cute seals and beautiful goosanders. Whilst we think that they, the great urbanised masses, are overly sentimental, unrealistic, dare one say anthropomorphic, in their love of the hunter, with no regard whatever for the plight/slaughter of the unseen hunted.

But unless we can persuade them, the numbers of grey seals and FEBs (fish eating birds) will, it is reasonable to assume, continue to climb.

So here we are in 2018 with over 200,000 grey seals and nearly 100,000 FEBs in the UK, and both are increasing, year on year.

At the very least the River Tweed Commission (and other river boards) should be given the necessary powers to allow us to control their numbers within the river environment…….and thereby to fulfil the RTC’s duty under the Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed ) Order 2006, where it is charged, by specific statute, with “the general preservation and increase of salmon, sea trout, trout and other freshwater fish in the River Tweed and its tributaries”.

Some would argue that the RTC carrying out its statutory remit is impossible unless the Commissioners can fully protect their fish, both adult and juvenile, from the increasing numbers of their predators within the river area for which the RTC has jurisdiction.

At the moment, so that argument goes, quite simply they cannot….

….through no fault of their own.