Otters:
a cause for concern
Though keen anglers see the sport as a very important part of their life
I realise that people who do not fish probably see our chosen sport as
an irrelevance not worth thinking about.
However, there are a few things that are happening now that give cause
for concern, or rather they should do so, whether you are an angler or
not.
The success of attempts to reintroduce otters to our rivers in recent
years is a case in point. Please don’t misunderstand me and please
accept that I find otters to be delightful creatures.
The few occasions when I have seen otters in the wild while I was fishing
I consider a privilege and I do not begrudge the otters most of the fish
that they kill.
However, the creatures are beginning to pose problems for fishery owners
and managers. The most famous fish in British fisheries has been found
dead on the bank recently, and it appears to have been killed by an otter.
The fish, a barbel that held the record weight for the species lived in
a well known part of the Great Ouse river.
Carp kills are worrying too. Among the carp killed by otters are two fish
that weighed 40lbs each and that had cost the fishery owners no less than
£10,000 to stock.
I do not know what we can do about this, and I certainly would not approve
of killing otters after they are recovering from near extinction due,
not to hunting, but to pollution and spoiling of their habitat.
Another concern is that unscrupulous fish dealers keep getting caught
with fish illegally imported from abroad with the likelihood that these
fish may well carry strains of disease that our native fish have no immunity
to. Many of our stocks have been depleted as a result of this.
Call me a racist if you wish, but I cannot help thinking that a similar
thing could happen, or has already happened, as a result of illegal human
immigrants with no health checks. TB is a case in point. It is occuring
more frequently now though not long ago we had almost erradicated it in
England.