Apathy rules yet again

[Newt]

Haven't we discussed your pedantic tendencies before?

.... have a natural right to do so, ....

I can certainly be pedantic on occasion - usually having fun with it. In this case, I really wasn't though.

 

You speak of otters having rights and then here of 'natural rights' as if it were some sort of fact and not a philosophical position that some folks hold and others do not. I hear the same sort of cant from some of my fundementalist Christian friend speaking of 'God given right'.

 

I'm perfectly willing to let you continue to believe in animal rights, natural rights, God given rights, etc. and act on those beliefs unless you cause me problems by doing so. I have noticed, however, that many of the 'rights' folk are not willing to allow others to have different beliefs.

 

An otter has a perfect 'right' to live as long as it can effectively find food and shelter and avoid it's natural enemies. The moment it fails in any of those, it only has a 'right' to die. IMO. Man can certainly be classed as a natural ememy.

[Nicepix]

Nature will restore a balance. Otters or mink for that matter will never fish a river out completely or they would not survive. Their numbers will regulate according to the food supply.

 

It is man who is largely upsetting the balance by introducing additional food into the waters. That food creates a larger fish population which in turn attracts predators.

[Peter Sharpe]

The problem with many of the otters that have been released is that they are not exactly wild animals. A few were released locally on a stretch of the upper Welland that has already been devastated by abstraction and cormorants. They were were even seen sunbathing in broad daylight on the banks of the weirpool in Stamford Meadows, by people walking their dogs. They could even be seen occasionally from a place where I used to work in Stamford, where an almost canal-like section of the river flows through a built up area. It is a sadly misguided scheme to introduce them into most of their old haunts, because many of the watercourses that formed part of their territory simply no longer exist, or else hold little in the way of food for them.

[Tim Kelly]

I would imagine in the case of the ouse, rather than feeding causing a larger population of fish it in fact causes a population of larger fish - with attractive boilie bellies!

Edited December 29, 2006 by Tim Kelly

[Charlie Bettell]

As much as I like otters, they're a pain in the butt in my opinion.

 

Before otters were re-introduced to the rivers I fish, I never had to worry, or feel guilty about hooking such an adorable creature - now I live in fear of hooking one and am not sure what I would do if I did!

 

They've been hooked by local pike anglers, will be again, and will inevitably end up suffering - what with treble hooks stuck in their mouths and yards of line trailing behind them.

 

If otters were meant to be in our local waters, they would not have had to be re-introduced when fish stocks were at a high.

 

Let nature run its course I say!

[Peter Waller]

They've been hooked by local pike anglers, will be again, and will inevitably end up suffering - what with treble hooks stuck in their mouths and yards of line trailing behind them.

 

Gosh, yet another quote for the web pages of 'Pisces', the anti angling group.

 

That said I agree with Charlie's sentiments on this one.

[zedhead]

some very short sighted opinions being voiced on this subject IMO. i think its completely unreasonable to suggest otters are a pain because we might hook them whilst pike fishing, have we got a superior right to go pike fishing than the otter has to eat?

Newt, where do you stand on this? from what ive read so far, your view runs paralel to americas views on the environment.....man 1st everything else 2nd.

I dont want to sound like a tree hugger but otters have every right to eat fish and so what if its the traveller? the otters done the poor 'PET' fish a favor.

[Mark Crame]

Pah, no real problem. Hungarians eat otters for Easter lunch don't they?

[dant]

Let nature run its course I say!

 

Nature wasn't allowed to run it's course regarding the extinction of Otters in certain areas, they were hunted, poisoned and polluted to death.

 

What came first the Otter or fisherman?

[Tim Kelly]

What came first the Otter or fisherman?

 

In the world as it is at the moment, the fisherman! Otters have been effectively extinct for 30 or more years, largely due to pollution and habitat destruction. In that 30 years man has changed the face of the rivers completely. Anglers have had a large influence on the cleaning up and stocking of our rivers, so the otter is, in terms of how the country is now, very much a newcomer.

 

I'd be quite pleased to have an occasional otter in the places I fish, but it would need to be there at a sustainable level. If they started having an effect on the population of fish they would need thinning out. Like cormerants, they are perfectly capable of moving on once the food source has been depleted, so they don't live in a "balanced" way in the same way as fish predators do, relying on the food in the water to sustain them.