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Message: <blockquote data-quote="captaincarot" data-source="post: 1723692" data-attributes="member: 80825">sorry my point there was i don't consider ground nesting birds to be a suitable reason for managing otters, they are no doubt at an artificially high population density due to years of otter absence.with the exception of fish population crashes due to external factors such as pollution/ abstraction or large numbers of nomadic predators congregating in one place there shouldn't be any need to manage their population at all.as for the zander question they haven't appeared to cause much of an effect on fish populations in the fens oter than reducing the size and number of pike possibly, i certainly wouldn't like to see them spread though, there are rumours of fish present in the trent catchment which means that they will probably end up in yorkshire also. it looks like we're stuck with them in the same way that we're stuck with grey squirrels. wells catfish other than again the trent they're not in any british rivers, and their introduction is controled in other waters so they are unlikely to spread further than their curent range.it might surprise you to know that there are a lot of anglers who are sick of the march of the carp. personally i'd ban new introductions to existing waters where they aren't already present and have a blanket ban on introductions to any water which is on or potentially within a flood plane.if some one must stock a carp it should be our native crucian) strain unfortunately these only appear to exist in about 6 waters in the country anymore. at least Andy has now managed to get genetic testing introduced onto the record caims procedure which might just turn up some waters where true non hybrid forms still exist. then again the common carp has been here for about 2000 years and much of their spread to rivers is actually due to migration in flood conditions (oxfordshire thames for example)i'm firmly within the camp who believe barbel should be in easterly flowing rivers but unfortunately the predecessor of the EA set the precedent for them moving west so convincing the non thinking among the angling fraternity that this should be the case is going to be night on impossible.as for either otter or cormorants or other fish species being responsible for our diminishing fish stock it's garbage, our fish stock are deminishing because of us (when i say us i don't mean you and me so much as local government, national government and the water companies) you and me only become involved when it rains and your local water company decides to dump the contents of the sewage treatment works into the local river.coincidentally i had to laugh as last year i was at RSPB old moor and read a sign telling me that the carp which could be seen in the lakes there were going to be removed in the coming weeks as they had only got in there due to some local flooding and had grown quite large as they had been in there for quite some time, they were going to be sold to some angling clubs.the thing that made me laugh was the fact that the carp weren't going to be removed for a short while and were actively spawning in the reeds over the opposite side of the body of water from the hide i was readig the sign in. so presumably they had acquired the carp for free, were going to be able to sell them back to their previous owners for a tidy sum and would be able to repeat the process in a few years time once those which had grown on from this spawning were ready to be sold. a nice little earner if you can get it.</blockquote>

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