Here is the latest e-mail from the Angling Trust, I have posted it on here to help keep non members of AT in the loop…..who knows it may prompt one or two of you to have a serious rethink?

Welcome to the January edition of Newscast – your Angling Trust monthly e-update. This month we bring you news about a significant legal win, an update on the promotion of hydropower by the EA, hope for action on cormorants, competitions and more member discounts.

NEWS
Fish Legal wins £20,000
The Angling Trust’s legal arm Fish Legal has kicked off the new year by winning nearly £20,000 for member club the Derwent Angling Association, whose fishing in the upper reaches of the River Derwent in Northumberland and County Durham was wiped out in February 2009 when sodium hydroxide escaped from a bank-side water treatment works operated by Northumbrian Water Ltd. Fighting cases like these is only possible with the support of our members – thank you. Click HERE for more information.

Banging on the Door of the Water Companies
Privatised water companies have a massive role to play in managing the quality and quantity of water in our rivers and seas. They make decisions every day, and probably every minute, which affect the level of pollutants in our waters. We believe that the public has a right to access information about how those decisions were taken, and other information, so that we can monitor what they are doing to protect wildlife and human health. Recent legal judgements have ruled that they can keep this information secret. We think that is wrong and potentially very damaging to our campaigns and legal work in the future.

The Angling Trust’s legal arm Fish Legal is therefore looking into an appeal, with the aim of giving water companies the same duties to provide environmental information as other public bodies. We have also taken our campaign to the European Commission, which has shown encouraging interest in the issue, and to the Aarhus Compliance Committee. We need the support of anglers for this campaign – please encourage everyone you know to join us now and/or make a donation to support this vital work. Barristers don’t come cheap, but are vital to protect our rights.

Angling Summit Next Week
The Angling Trust will be representing sea and freshwater anglers at an Angling Summit in London on Tuesday this week, hosted by Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon. Recreational sea angling fish stocks, non-native species (e.g. crayfish), hydropower, Environment Agency delivery, and the Water Framework Directive are all on the agenda of the 2 hour summit.

We are expecting the Minister to make an announcement about cormorants & goosanders following the Angling Trust’s pressure on him at the end of last year to ease the process for applying for licences to control these birds. We will also be setting the agenda for a further day-long Angling Summit in March with 150 invited guests.

Hydropower
The Angling Trust’s campaigns and legal teams continue to fight unsuitable hydropower developments throughout the country at a local level, but our job is made harder because both the Environment Agency and British Waterways seem hell bent on letting schemes go ahead without them demonstrating that fish will be protected. The latest press release from the Environment Agency, celebrating the streamlining of the application process, seems to be urging developers to install turbines in our rivers. British Waterways has even taken a shareholding in some of the companies involved and one of its senior employees is a Director of a hydro company.

The Angling Trust has arranged meetings with the Chief Executives of both organisations to press home to them the fact that hydropower will make a negligible contribution to renewable energy targets and that it can cause massive damage to coarse and game fish stocks, in particular to eels, and other wildlife. We will continue to fight for your interests, but we desperately need more resources to do so. Please encourage anglers to join us and