Your comments and opinion on game-fishing matters
Sharing with beavers
I find Dani Morey and Simon Cooper’s monthly contributions thoroughly depressing. They do not seem to want to share rivers with people or beavers. I fish the River Earn in Perthshire and happily share the river with people and beavers, neither of which have a negative impact on fishing or our fish stocks.
It would be useful if Trout & Salmon contributors would concentrate on the real challenges to our fish stocks; for example, intensive agriculture that removes insect habitat and extracts precious water.
CLEARLY, SIMON COOPER was writing about chalkstreams (August), which are a unique environment and best managed by river keepers, not beavers. I would however, welcome his thoughts, and indeed a wider debate around the broader impact of the re-introduction of the beaver — in a managed and monitored way — into freestone river catchments.
My local river is the Lune, and as readers will know, its salmon run has collapsed. The reasons for this are manifold, not least fish farming and the impact of climate change, but agricultural run-off is also a very major factor.
It is with the latter that the beaver could have a positive impact. Their efforts act as a natural filter, holding back some of the damaging run-off, as well as reducing flash flooding in the rockier terrain of the north. It seems to me that their activity may benefit many northern rivers by mitigating both of these.
I quite agree that the sentimental elements within the rewilding lobby are damaging to objective deci
