Latest Environment Agency Fisheries update
Hello from everyone at the Environment Agency,
We are pleased to bring you the latest updates on our fisheries work. For Team EA, we have had a busy month, with the unsettled weather leading to multiple reports of fish in distress due to the impact that warmer temperatures have on oxygen levels in our waters. We deployed aeration equipment to several fisheries including Colliery Plantation in West Lancashire where oxygen levels were restored after three days and we have been giving advice to a number of fisheries owners.
We continue to check our fish passes for flood damage and have been arranging repair work where needed as it’s vital that our fish passes work as well as possible.
We were also pleased to announce that fishery improvement funds have just been confirmed for a host of river and stillwater improvement projects – this will see some great work on river and stillwater fisheries take place later this year. £91,750 from rod licence income is being used to fund eight projects across the Lancashire county area and is being matched by partners resulting in an overall investment of £200,000. We are also currently working on the latter stages of potentially securing additional funding that will provide further boost to our rivers and fisheries!
Increasing patrols and enforcement
Over the past month, we’ve focused more patrol efforts on the Border Esk, Ehen and Eden alongside our regular patrols after we received reports of anglers taking salmon where they shouldn’t, as well as cases of some anglers fishing without licences or being club members. We’re reminding everyone that you must obtain a licence to fish as well as necessary permissions to access a fishery. All of the money we receive from rod licence sales funds work to protect and improve our fisheries and will benefit the angling community.
We worked closely with the Police and Lake District National Park Authority over the bank holiday weekend to patrol as many hotspots for offences as we could. The lakes often see illegal camping and fishing but we were pleased to report good behavior in general.
We continue to work with the Police and Angling Trust across Cumbria and Lancashire and have again helped with the annual specialist training undertaken by Wildlife Officers. The course run by the Police has gained popularity every year and this year over 50 officers attended.
Our fishery officers also delivered additional training to Lancashire and Merseyside Police Wildlife Officers on fisheries legislation and the negative impacts of poaching game fish, stealing coarse fish from angling club waters and rivers, poaching and smuggling elvers, fish disease, alien fish and plant species and how we can work together to reduce fisheries crime.
Fish restocking
Our teams over in Norfolk have been busy installing a new fish pass on the river Wensum in Norwich. The development of this fish pass means that fish and eels now have access to an extra 5,000m of the river – a great boost for the fish population.
Environment Agency staff have also been busy near Thetford, releasing 10,000 young dace into the River Thet. The fish were part of a very large batch of dace that spawned at our National Fish Farm.
Our fish farm had a record-breaking year, with half a million fish restocked across England – our largest ever tonnage of fish! 12.3 tonnes of fish were produced at the farm in Nottinghamshire in 2019 – compared with 11.6 tonnes the previous year – an increase of 6%. In 2017, the amount of fish bred at the farm was 9 tonnes. The farm also bred over seven million larvae. We bred these at the farm for an extended period of time to ensure the larvae were more likely to survive.
Restocking our rivers not only helps boost fish populations but also supports a healthy ecology and benefits anglers.
Don’t forget to stay in touch!
Our teams work round the clock to respond to environmental incidents, including pollution or fish in distress. If you discover any Illegal fishing, pollution or incidents harming the environment please report it to the Environment Agency on 0800 80 70 60.
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