Your Otter problem

[phonebush]

Newt,

What's wrong with eating a few kids. Seems to me we got plenty!

Phone:D

[Newt]

Phone - my point exactly. No shortage now or in the forseeable future.

 

And I have some likely canidates picked out already.

[TheDacer]

If you go swimming you should expect to get wet.

Not complain about the fact that you get wet.

 

Likewise, if you own a fishery, you should expect Otters to eat some of your fish.

 

We have to live with our environment - not destroy everything that happens to get in our way.

[Leon Roskilly]

TheDacer:

If you go swimming you should expect to get wet.

Not complain about the fact that you get wet.

 

Likewise, if you own a fishery, you should expect Otters to eat some of your fish.

 

We have to live with our environment - not destroy everything that happens to get in our way.

If you go swimming and find that someone has drained your pool, you'd complain!

 

Build a fishery where there otters around - I couldn't agree more.

 

Build a fishery where otters haven't been around for 50 years, then have someone decide to release them next door - I think that you have just cause for complaint.

 

Personally, I'd be quite happy, fishing a wild natural water, to have an otter sharing the river, I'd enjoy watching it fishing as much as I enjoy watching the kingfishers.

 

I don't think that anyone is proposing that the released otters should be hunted down and exterminated (apart from Izaak!). What the SAA is looking for is the cessation of further releases where these are likely to be a problem, and for some form of assistance to fishery operators in protecting affected fisheries from the ravages of otters irresponsibly released.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[NigelT]

Just for the record our carp fishery had been in existence for eighteen years before the otter moved in. Of course it would be foolhardy to develop a fishery now in an area where otters are common and then not to take precautions.

 

I myself have seen otters on countless occassions fishing rivers, but that is really where they belong or rather it is where THEY are most at home. Dacer you must remember that we live in a highly managed environment, there are not many wilderness areas left in the world, therfore the artificial environments we create need protection just as much as the wild animals that share them.

 

Our fishery is an oasis for wildlife, indeed if English Nature knew about some of the plants that we had they would immediately declare it an SSSI and stop us fishing, but ask organisations like that for help regarding an otter problem - forget it.

[TheDacer]

Leon & NigelT

 

You both make good points. And I think it would only be fair if fisheries such as yours, NigelT, did get the help they need to protect themselves against Otter predation.

 

Unfortunately, as you say, we live in a highly-managed society, and I imagine more or less everyone could stake a claim for financial assistance against this or that problem. But where, then, would all the funding come from?

 

Sadly - as Thatcher ruthlessly demonstrated during the early '80s - a commercial business has to stand on it's two feet without such subsidy. (Though quite why Farming is exempt I don't know?!)

 

In other words, now that the Otters are there, you'll have to cope.

 

As to further releases - I would agree that fishery owners should be given due notice, and not just find the Otters eating their Carp one fine sunny morning - but the Otter should still be released. Like it or not, it has primary fishing rights in the UK - over and above those of a club/commercial water.

 

[ 02 April 2002, 11:16 AM: Message edited by: TheDacer ]

[poledark]

Dacer, where did you get the idea that otters have rights that overide the rights of mankind?

I expect you will say that they were here before us but can you be sure of that?

 

So if we carry your argument forward then the house where you live should be demolished for surely some wild creatures ancestors lived there before you.

 

Stupid argument I know but no more stupid than releasing a predatory animal loose onto someone elses stock. I suppose it will be wolves next and to hell with the lambs, after the wolves were there first.

 

Sorry old son these otters should be trapped and removed back to the cages they came from and failing that they should be shot. OOher ooher!

 

Den

[Chris Burt]

All

Just for the record, under no circumstances should anyone even think for one moment about harming, removing, trapping or otherwise interfering with an otter in any way, shape or form! They are protected by UK law and EU law, and if anglers are ever shown to be harming otters them you will seriously embarass our efforts to secure funding for fisheries protection. We cannot turn the clock back to when there were no otters in many areas, all we can do is deal constructively and realisticly with the situation as it now is. The real time for anglers to have advanced some of these other points was probably 10 years ago in the general conservation forums where the Otter BAPS Project was originally formulated, but of course we weren't involved then, and are only scratching the surface of such discussions on other wildlife and environmental issues even now. The old one of lack of people, cash, resource, all the old ones are the best......

Remember we HAVE secured agreement to stop further releases of captive bred otters, we are seeking licences for future releases, and cash to protect fisheries. The fact of the otters return and spread is somthing we cannot and will not stop. Likewise its legal protection is non-negotiable!

Regards

Chris Burt, SAA

[NigelT]

Chris,

 

I quite agree we can't turn the clock back and have to try and secure funding for fishery protection. However, you won't believe how close we came to bumping that otter off, if we had, no one would have been any the wiser but the animal would have been replaced sooner or later as another one spreads out in search of new territory.

 

Some of the early solutions we tried and were advised to try were ludicrous ie.

 

Hanging transistor radios in the trees - we kept running out of batteries.

 

Flashing lights - we used road traffic ones.

 

Spreading Lion **** around the ponds. The best we could do was crap from one of our members gundogs. A very smelly and stomach churning business.

 

The fence we tried first was next to useless, cost over £1000.00 and couldn't be maintained in that type of environment.

 

Despite what people think the otter is not a shy creature and probably danced it's way around the radios thinking it was at the local disco, and laughed at our Lion poo. Indeed on one occasion the bloody thing was seen swimming around inside the fence (mk1 version) when one of our members was trying to get the electricity supply running again!!

[sharky]

Chris

Youre obviously doing a great job. In my area the otter was hunted to extinction. I wonder why. Was it a protected animal then. I think Izaak got his way. Also may I remind you that cormorants are protected birds. As I said before people will take a chance and take the law into there own hands. And as there was no information given that otters were about to be released did they take the law into there own hands. Of course they did. They were hunted before and will be again I,m sorry but thats how it is.