Game anglers for fish, people, the environment
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S&TA Welcomes Government Decision to update Freshwater Fisheries (read more)
STA applauds brave decision to close the Irish Drift Net Fishery (read more)
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The Salmon & Trout Association (S&TA) represents the interests of the UK’s game anglers, fishery owners/managers and affiliated trades, in all issues relevant to angling and fisheries legislation, regulation, management and conservation. We have close working relationships with Government departments and agencies, advising them over fisheries and angling matters and influencing their decision-making processes on behalf of our membership and, indeed, all those with an interest in the aquatic environment.
S&TA has 15,000 individual and 85,000 club-based members, and we are active in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and have close links with Europe through the European Angling Alliance.
Our work covers three keys areas:
Water and habitat management
Fish stock management
Promotion of game angling
Game angling in the United Kingdom is a hugely diverse sport relying on a wide range of river and stillwater habitats, a collective resource which is at the mercy of matters beyond the single angler’s control – excessive water abstraction, land management practices, drainage, diffuse pollution, urban run-off and inadequately treated sewage, together with the inevitable confrontation between different water users in an overcrowded island. It is more important than ever, therefore, that game anglers have a strong and effective organisation representing them when decisions are taken over the management and conservation of our wetlands.
The Salmon & Trout Association (S&TA) is the only organisation representing the interests of game anglers and fishery owners at the highest level – within Government departments and agencies. Although established over one hundred years ago, the original brief for the Association was to improve the salmon and trout fisheries of the United Kingdom following degradation caused by the Industrial Revolution. Little has changed in the Association’s work today, except that the drivers for degraded fisheries habitat have transferred from the heavy industry of yore to the more modern impacts mentioned above.
Water
S&TA represents angling and fisheries interests on Defra stakeholders’ groups concerned with the Water Framework Directive and delivery of Catchment Sensitive Farming, and with Ofwat over the PRO 9 water pricing round, in which the Regulator will decide how much money is available to water companies to spend on environmental programmes from 2010. These are vital issues over which fisheries interests must have credible influence, so as to ensure our waterways are managed and conserved for the benefit of dependent species as much as people.
Fly Life
Monitoring is essential to gauge the success of aquatic management, and the Association sees fly life as central to this process. We currently hold the chair of the Riverfly Partnership, a group including the Natural History Museum and Buglife, whose brief is to increase awareness of aquatic fly life issues and to organise workshops in which anglers undertake basic training in invertebrate identification and monitoring techniques, enabling them to record insect numbers on local waters and report results to the EA.
Sheep Dips
Cypermethrin sheep dips are toxic insecticides designed to kill parasites, but in concentrations as low as 1 part per billion, they cause devastation to aquatic invertebrate populations, and also damage the reproduction and juvenile life stages of salmonids. S&TA has lobbied for a ban on cypermethrin since 1997, and the recent Veterinary Medicines Directorate’s decision to suspend the marketing licence marked a significant milestone in fisheries NGO influence over environmental issues. We now have to continue the fight until cypermethrin is banned permanently in favour of the viable alternative sheep treatments already available to farmers.
Access
Other important issues recently include the attempt by the British Canoe Union to gain legal access to all waterways in the UK. S&TA continues to lobby hard for voluntary joint access agreements for water users, rather than a blanket right for any one sport to run roughshod over riparian rights – a view for which the Government has since confirmed its strong support. Anglers are regulated by the EA and provide £18.5m net of their £30m fisheries’ budget through licence fees. Anglers also enter legal access agreements with riparian and fishery owners, for which privilege they pay handsomely, and much of the revenue generated is invested back into river and stillwater management, restoration and conservation projects. All we ask is that other water users are licensed, regulated and contribute into funding coffers in similar fashion, so that we all enjoy a level playing field.
Salmon, trout, Sea Trout and Grayling Management
We advise and influence both nationally and internationally over the management of all our game fish species, with issues as diverse as the implementation of the EA’s Trout and Grayling Strategy and the closure of the Irish Republic’s drift net salmon fishery, which impacts stocks destined for many English and Welsh rivers. We are currently embarking on a consultation period with the EA over their future strategy for migratory fish.
Education
Education is a priority within S&TA, highlighted by the publication of the Brown Trout Big Book this year, which was distributed to 11,000 primary schools throughout England, introducing them to the aquatic environment through the life cycle of the brown trout. This is the start of a Hearts and Minds campaign, which we see as a more positive method of countering any future anti-angling action rather than being purely reactive at the time. Meanwhile, we continue to introduce 3,000 newcomers every year through our one-day courses organised through our extensive Branch system.
S&TA is now well into its second hundred years of operation, and will continue to represent the interests of all those involved in game angling and fisheries management wherever and whenever the need arises.