Madam, - It was interesting to read of the scheme proposed by Noel Wilkins (Opinion, July 29th) by which anglers should effectively pay for the cost of compensating commercial salmon netsmen for not killing salmon - as if there were any more left to kill.
Anglers are the main contributors to the survival of the salmon as they have managed and enhanced the spawning habitat under ever increasing difficulties to date.
The causes for the decline are numerous, ranging from pollution to the climatic. There is, however, one predominant reason caused by the policy of this Government: mixed stock fisheries or drift-netting, as outlined in the standing scientific report to the National Salmon Commission last January.
Angling is a sustainable sporting practice as it takes a minuscule number of salmon compared with a commercial netting industry that takes an unsustainable amount (over 90 per cent) of the national salmon catch.
Yet Mr Wilkins proposes that anglers should pay the commercial netsmen under a statutory scheme for the recovery of salmon. Minister Noel Dempsey's office has already signed an order to ban the catching of salmon on angling waters in over half of our fishery districts from next month and his interference with our angling rules will deter tourist anglers from ever returning to our rivers. Would the Ryder Cup be played here if the State banned putting or driving on Irish golf courses?
Such is the hostility to our sport and to the angling tourism industry that it now appears our 15-year intensive campaign to save Irish salmon will be met with restrictions that will ruin angling in order to appease those powerful few in the commercial nets sector who have fished out our resource.
It is evident that the good professor of zoology has not yet changed the very opinion which prompted him to tender his resignation as chairman of the first National Salmon Commission in 2001.
Nothing has changed since then, except the ever-decreasing numbers and average weight of our salmon. Our solution to repair this damage remains the same today. Only a state-facilitated buyout of commercial netting licences under the brokerage of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund will return our stocks to abundance and protect our wonderful salmon for future generations. - Yours, etc,
NOEL CARR, Secretary, Federation of Irish Salmon and Seatrout Anglers, Carrick, Co Donegal.