Please read and protest to your MP

To All SACN Members,

We are at a time when most meaningful RSA intiatives seem to be stalled.

The decision to increase the mls of bass to just 40cm was withdrawn just before it was due to be implemented in April, and we are still waiting for the Minister to announce his decision as to whether there is going to be any increase at all.

The consultation on protection for tope has disappeared off the horizon.

The consultation on DEFRA's strategy fro Recreational Sea Angling has seemingly been put back from this spring, now to 'late summer'.

In short, despite all the recommendations of both the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, and the EFRA committee, DEFRA are dragging their feet on anything that might be of benefit to RSA, whilst steaming ahead on proposals to introduce licensing, bag limits, control bait-digging and to generally 'regulate' and 'manage' Recreational Sea Angling.

Talk to DEFRA officials and they will talk about lack of resources, and things needing time.

And yet when the Commercial Inshore Sector recently complained about the EU directive to make thornback ray a bycatch only species, with only 25% of the catch allowed as roker, the wheels of DEFRA went into overdrive, firstly to negotiate extra quota on sole to compensate, then to allow a 200kg per day landing of roker before the bycatch rule kicks in.

So much for lack of resources and things needing time.

If you make enough noise in the right places, they CAN get their finger out when they want to.

What seems to have happened is that RSA has been lead into trap, whereby the political impetus for RSA that was being built, has been deflected by pointing us in the direction of DEFRA who seemingly have little enthusiasm for pursuing RSA issues, traditionally having only having seen themselves as catering for the commercial fishing industry.

Added to which the commercial fishing organisations and their sympathisers in organisations such as the Sea Fisheries Commmittees have been quietly putting in the boot.

But worst of all, the RSA lobby, engaged in talks and consultations, has failed to keep up the political pressure from the outside.

At the end of the day, civil servants are supposed to do what the government tells them to do (but we've all seen 'Yes Minister), and the government responds to what public opinion (and more importantly their own MPs) are telling them is needed.

And the MPs will tell the Government what needs doing based on the contents of their mailbag from their own constituents and what they read in the press.

So, to get anything out of DEFRA, we need to spend less of our effort talking to them directly, and more time telling the politicians what to tell them to do.

Give them a strong message that there is a significant RSA lobby, that wants something done, not just promises and warm words, consultations and papers, but something tangible happening.

'We MUST do something for Sea Anglers' is the message that we need them to take on board.

So, though dispirited and tired, RSA campaigners need to stop sitting around waiting for the next thing to happen, waiting for promised responses that probably won't deliver much of any benefit, and to regain the intiative and re-start their noise-making with increased vigour.

And to encourage anglers to also keep up the noise-making.

Because if we don't, politically we no longer exist.


As a start, having consulted amongst the SACN executive, and with other RSA organisations, SACN intends to launch a new intitiative demanding action on the Golden Mile.

Undoubtedly this is the one issue which seems to unite most anglers, and which most scares both the commercials and DEFRA, who are trying hard to water down any suggestion of a Golden Mile within the RSA strategy consultation.

And yet which seems to capture the imagination, not only of anglers, but many politicians and the powerful 'green lobby'.

What we all need to do, no matter how many times we are told 'NO' by some official, is to keep hammering away on the issue, with anglers writing to their MPs; trying to get stories based on the Golden Mile idea into newspapers and on TV, and sell the idea for promotion by the green organisations such as WWF, Natural England, the marine Conservation Society, the Wildlife Trusts etc.,


You can help by looking at the attached, and not only writing to your MP, but getting your friends and angling club etc to do likewise.

And keep up the pressure anyway that you feel that you can.


We may not get everything that we want, but if we stop asking for anything we'll certainly get nothing, and probably get some things that we don't want at all.

So, let's make a noise!

Let's get everyone talking about the Golden Mile.



Regards - Leon Roskilly

Sea Anglers' Conservation Network (SACN)

http://www.sacn.org.uk


SACN Ireland: http://www.sacn-online.org/
SACN Channel Islands: http://www.fishing-guernsey.co.uk/SACN.html
SACN Scotland: http://www.sacnscotland.co.uk/


Latest Conservation News: http://www.sacn.org.uk/Conservation-and-Political-News/