Examination of witnesses (Questions 400
- 417)
TUESDAY 7 DECEMBER 1999
LORD MORAN,
MR MARK
HATCHER and MR
CHRIS POUPARD
400. Have you got any instances at all to tell
the Committee about actual or potential harm the Environment Agency
has done, or could do, because of this deficit?
(Mr Hatcher) One of the big issues is the amount of
effort that is put into protecting salmon stocks. Would you agree
with that, Chris?
(Mr Poupard) Yes.
Chairman
401. What can you tell us about cormorants?
According to Reddish anglers there is a total failure of co-operation
between English Nature and the Environment Agency. I think the
Reddish anglers would like every cormorant that ever existed to
be exterminated.
(Mr Hatcher) Yes, definitely.
402. Is there a problem?
(Mr Hatcher) Yes.
403. What is the solution to it?
(Mr Poupard) The problem is that cormorants are easy
to see and easy to count. This relates to the English Nature problem
as well. You cannot see fish and to a certain extent they have
been ignored by the statutory agencies. We are doing our best
to raise the profile of fisheries and rectify that and it is beginning
to come to fruition. The problem with cormorants is that there
needs to be a mutual recognition of what each other party wants.
We recognise that the bird interests want sustainable populations
of fish eating birds and that is fine but they need to recognise
that we need sustainable populations of fish. I regret that the
thing is slightly out of balance. We have some populations of
fish which are in steep decline at the moment.
404. Such as?
(Mr Poupard) Such as salmon. There are populations
of fish eating birds which are increasing quite dramatically.
We are not asking, as some do, to shoot every cormorant in sight,
that would not be sensible and would not be sustainable. What
we are asking for is a degree of sensible management. There needs
to be a realistic view taken to achieve a balance between the
control of predators and the salmon population.[3]
405. Whose fault is it, is it the Environment
Agency or English Nature or a lack of co-operation between the
two?
(Lord Moran) It is the Government. There has been
a research project initiated by the Government which is just reporting
which we are following up. We put in a paper to the review group
on this which I think was a pretty moderate paper which followed
the line that Chris Poupard has been saying, that we do not want
to exterminate all the fish eating birds but we want a balance
and we want to see sustainable populations of both birds and fish.
406. So it is an amendment to the Wildlife and
Countryside Act to move them from total protection to less protection?
(Mr Poupard) Not necessarily. I think the bird lobby
would oppose that absolutely. We are actually going from here
to a meeting with the RSPB and other fisheries interests which
is being hosted by MAFF and the DETR. The approach we are taking
is we have had pre-meetings with the RSPB to try to come to a
sensible agreement with them. We are making progress but it is
going to take time. The two options are to move them off the protected
list, which is not acceptable to the bird interest, and the other
approach is to revise the licensing procedure and that is the
approach that we are taking.
407. Is that anything to do with the Environment
Agency or is it just that they happened to be—
(Mr Poupard) The advisory body which advises the Government
on licence applications is English Nature but the Environment
Agency do have a role to play. One of the problems we have is
demonstrating serious damage to fish stocks. As I have said before,
it is easy to count birds but it is much more difficult to measure
what damage is being done to fish stocks. This is a major sticking
point. The RSPB are very confrontational. We persuaded the Government
to relax the licensing procedure several years ago and the RSPB
immediately slapped a judicial review on them claiming lack of
consultation and lack of scientific evidence. We are trying to
persuade them to apply the precautionary approach which is rather
in vogue at the moment.
Mr Donohoe
408. I think it is going to be an interesting
meeting. How do you justify your request for substantial additional
funding for the Agency's fisheries function when the Agency itself
has made no such request, and indeed argued in its Annual Report
for less reliance on grant-in-aid?
(Mr Poupard) I will start off. You have me at somewhat
of a disadvantage because I was not aware that the Environment
Agency was asking for less money. We believe the Environment Agency
is seriously underfunded primarily because of the huge task it
faces in repairing historical damage to fisheries caused by impactors
in the past: insensitive land drainage works, gross industrial
pollution, habitat disruption and so on and so forth. In fact,
the Environment Agency has supplied us with figures that they
would like to spend at least 17.5 million a year on habitat improvement.
We are talking about very large sums to put our habitat right.
Because it is now impossible to address who actually caused the
problem in the first place the only sensible way is for it to
come from grant-in-aid. I could make the point that the Environment
Agency suffers very badly from very small quantities of GIA already,
as has been said. In contrast, this year British Waterways is
to get £60 million of GIA from the DETR whereas the fisheries
function is to be cut next year by 33 per cent. We believe this
to be grossly inequitable.
409. What evidence do you have that the balance
of funding from different sources is not right at present?
(Mr Poupard) At the moment there is a vastly undue
reliance on the income stream from rod licences. Rod licences
were set up in law to regulate angling, not to fund the fisheries
service. Currently they are contributing 13.4 million which is
the major proportion of funds going into the fisheries service.
This is an anachronism. Anglers are being expected to fund an
environmental protection service when they, in fact, do no damage
to the environment themselves.
410. There could be a bit of an argument about
it.
(Mr Hatcher) That is actually a very important point
because we do point out the fact that angling relies on sustainable
exploitation of fisheries. The point which we have made to the
review group very strongly is the fact that the actual factors
which impact on fisheries have got very, very little to do with
angling whatsoever, like water resources, water quality, development
policies, agricultural policy, flood defence. All of these kinds
of things have a huge impact and recreation has a huge impact
which is only now becoming to be realised because of the failure
of fisheries to improve with water quality improvements.
411. This is not the same system that operates
north of the border of course.
(Mr Hatcher) No.
412. They are much more sensible there, are
they not?
(Mr Hatcher) One may believe that.[4]
(Lord Moran) On the question of funding,
I think it is very important that the Environment Agency should
have these very large sums which they need in order to look after
fisheries. We think that the only way in which you can get those
large funds is to get people like the polluters, the big impactors,
to pay a very small percentage in. I believe this is the view
of the Environment Agency themselves.
413. What do you think of the mix of funding
given that all the money in the Agency funding for fisheries comes
from MAFF rather than DETR? Do you think that it would be something
that would be better to be funded from DETR given its responsibility
for the Agency?
(Mr Poupard) We think there is a fundamental conflict
having certainly the fisheries function and many of the other
environmental functions of the Agency funded by MAFF. MAFf is
essentially a food production industry—a food production
ministry, I am sorry.
414. It is more like an industry.
(Mr Poupard) That is right. All the evidence we have
indicates that the interests of the environment and the Agency
have not been well served by being located under MAFF. One of
the central recommendations we actually made in the Moran Committee
Report was that consideration should be given to transferring
some of the functions over to the DETR.
Mr Brake
415. Mr Hatcher, you said that anglers do not
impact fish, it is about water quality and pollution and so on.
Is not the same true of cormorants?
(Mr Hatcher) I am not quite with you.
416. You said that there is very limited impact
in terms of angling but is it not also true that there is very
limited impact in terms of cormorants and what actually counts
is water quality, pollution and the other things that you mentioned
earlier?
(Mr Hatcher) Yes and no. The research which has just
been completed has confirmed that there are areas in the country
where the impact of bird predation is significant in the sustainability
of the fishery. This can be tied in with all sorts of other issues.
The question is how do you address those other issues? Take, for
example, the River Lea in East London. That is an extremely degraded
river. The majority of the fish populations in the lower reach
of it are almost all artificial because in order to keep the populations
up there have to be regular restocking and the cormorants make
whoopee. If it is a recreational facility for angling, because
it is so degraded it cannot at present be regarded a natural ecosystem,
it needs an awful lot of work to be done on it. You have got to
strike a balance somewhere.
(Mr Poupard) If I could give one more example from
the salmonid side. Salmon are in serious decline. We would not
argue that is all down to goosanders or cormorants, it is very
complex, global warming, agricultural policy, sedimentation, acid
rain, you name it. The fact is in upland rivers, for example,
spawning escapement is below target, juveniles are below their
adequate density. If everything was perfect there would be a thriving
population and the birds and fish could co-exist. What we are
saying is that in upland areas because the fish are in serious
decline the impact of goosanders and sawbills is yet another nail
in the coffin of the salmon, so precautionary measures need to
be taken to control numbers until we can get the basic fish biodiversity.
Chairman
417. On the basis of that plea for the fish
I think we will have to close this session. Can I thank you very
much for your evidence.
(Lord Moran) Thank you very much for giving us the
opportunity to come in.
3 Note by witness: As well as cormorants, sawbill
ducks (goosanders and mergansers) are major predators of juvenile
salmonids in upland river systems in parts of England and Wales.
Sawbill populations have increased by as much as 150% in some
areas of Wales. Cormorants are more widespread predators of coarse
fish stocks throughout England and Wales, especially in the South
East, Anglia, and North West England. There have been calls from
some angling and fisheries interests for strong culling of cormorants
and sawbill ducks, but the Moran Committee is seeking a balanced
response to the problem. Back
4
Note by witness: This reply was ironic. The Scottish model
has serious shortcomings. Fisheries boards do not exist at all
in a number of areas of Scotland. Where they do exist they do
not have powers extensive enough to deal with the whole range
of factors which affect the water environment, or the structure
to manage them in an integrated fashion. In contrast, the Environment
Agency covers all areas of England and Wales, and has made appreciable
progress towards achieving integrated catchment management. The
Moran Committee is firmly opposed to any major structural change
of the system in England and Wales, or the removal of the fisheries
responsibility from the Environment Agency. Back
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