news/editorial

29 March 2015 News/Editorial

The headlines for what follows could read something like this:

“Are the interests and rights of Scottish salmon fishery owners being represented?”

…….or, more sensationally, eg in The Sun (!):

“Scottish salmon fishery owners sleepwalking to oblivion?”

It is a curious thing that the Tweed, an atypical river in Scotland, because it is both cross border and has its own very individual legislation, is making most noise about the Wild Fisheries Review and what it sees as red line issues.

Some say we are making this noise too early, before it is known which bits of the Thin review will be included in the final consultation, but the trouble with not doing that, is that it can imply acquiescence, even consent, to things that may be unacceptable.

Perhaps Tweed owners are better briefed than those on other rivers, maybe they are naturally more cussed and awkward, or maybe other river owners don’t care……...or more sinister, and likely, they just don’t know.

So who does represent the views of Scottish salmon fishery owners?

And, one wonders, exactly what weight does anyone in this process give to the people who have the only right there is to fish for and catch Scottish salmon?

Some say that the Government would rather talk to anyone but the owners, which would be extraordinary, just as Andrew Thin and his committee, in their report, hardly mentions them?

The Association of Salmon Fishery Boards (ASFB) is the representative body of the 41 Scottish District Fishery Boards including the Tweed.

The ASFB’s day to day business is handled by a hardworking and knowledgeable permanent staff, and there are periodic management committee meetings, with 2 annual meetings of the full membership. The management committee is a good mix of experienced river managers and fishery owners.

All that is well and good for normal ongoing business, and an excellent job ASFB has done over recent times with many difficult issues to contend with ……..but the question posed, when confronted by the seismic potential consequences of the Wild Fisheries Review, is:

“Does the ASFB represent the rights and interests of Scottish salmon fishery owners?”

It seems that there is a most bizarre misunderstanding at the bottom of this, in that the owners think the ASFB represents their interests….. but that the ASFB does not think that at all.

Can we really have gone so far without anyone representing the views of those who own the right to fish?

Disquiet is fuelled by the ASFB/RAFTS (the equally excellent Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland) joint working group, set up to consider the Fisheries Review, which has 9 or 10 members, only one of which is a fishery owner, and he is there as Chairman of ASFB (which does not, it seems, represent salmon fishery owners).

In other words, there is not one salmon fishery owner on the ASFB/RAFTS joint working group.

It is almost as if the ASFB and RAFTS see the owners as some sort of embarrassment, like a disappointing relative you don’t want to admit to, and dare not produce in polite society for fear of contamination by association…...or because they see the owners as the unfortunate product of years of inbreeding, chinless drivellers with at least three heads each who can, indeed must, be ignored “in the public interest”.

How strange is all that? Is the ASFB and RAFTS deliberately excluding them, is it an accident….do the salmon fishing owners realise that?

It might do to remind everyone that at present, and for years past, it is the salmon fishery owners who have paid all the bills in Scotland’s salmon fishing, that ASFB would not exist without them (it is wholly funded by them) and that the reason that Scottish salmon rivers are today in such comparatively good health (a) by international standards and (b) in terms of the maximised production of many millions of smolts every year (a much better/fairer measure of river management success than how many salmon come back).....is largely because of the vast amounts of money invested in their rivers, over the past 35 years in particular, by the owners, allowing the very significant improvement in management that there has been on almost all rivers.

It is up to other rivers and their owners what they think of how they are being represented…..or are not being represented, even if they imagine they are.

They should certainly wake up and find out before it is too late.

What of the Tweed? Is anybody truly representing the views of our owners to Government?

It is clear from the ASFB’s February bulletin that this ASFB/RAFTS joint working group, without a single proprietor on it, has been actively discussing the financing, the structure, the representation, the constitution of the proposed new replacements for the Boards, the Fishery Management Organisations (FMOs).

The statements by the RAFTS Chairman, in the 2015 ASFB/RAFTS Annual Review, just published, could not be clearer…...he envisages the demise of the Boards and ASFB, and with them, one can only assume, the local levy system which some owners, maybe even most owners (who knows because nobody has ever asked) find so anathema and are so concerned breaks the crucial link between local engagement/volunteering on the one hand and local accounting and accountability, including raising their own money, on the other.

So far down the FMO road have they gone that they are long past two crucial, fundamental issues:

First, do the fishery owners agree with the principle that the existing fishery boards and trusts should effectively cease to exist and be merged into the new charitable organisations, FMOs?

Secondly, as the new FMOs will have no statutory powers eg to raise their own money directly by annual levy on fishery owners, have the fishery owners in Scotland accepted that central Government will in future be levying on them an annual business rate equivalent, some of which may be “redeployed” to other rivers?

Now down here on the Tweed, we are viscerally opposed to getting rid of the River Tweed Commission, our very own river Board, and yet by going so far down the FMO route, way before the Government formal consultation process has even started, the ASFB and RAFTS appear not only to have conceded that the Boards should go and FMOs replace them, but, as night follows day, that levies will henceforth be collected centrally, not locally.

What mandate has the ASFB and RAFTS had to do this, certainly none from the Tweed, and from speaking to some other rivers, none from them either?

To sum up, it would seem that:

Scottish salmon fishery owners are not being represented.

ASFB/RAFTS have set up a joint working group to consider the Wild Fisheries Review without a single salmon fishery owner on it.

The joint working group has now met several times, before the formal consultation process has even started, and has evidently formed a very public, published view that FMOs are going to happen, should be encouraged, that river Boards will cease to exist and that, in consequence, annual levy funds will be collected centrally and not locally.

Quite apart from salmon fishery owners being extraordinarily unrepresented in all this, did the salmon fishing owners give any mandate to ASFB/RAFTS and the joint working group to go as far as it has?

I hope as many Scottish salmon fishing owners as possible will read this….. and ask themselves that question…..and maybe also….. what else is being decided, unknown to them, between ASFB/RAFTS and the Government?