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Fighting for More Fish and Fishing

Mark
Lloyd
September 21 2011

 

The Angling Trust was launched in January 2009 and it is now firmly established as the single unified organisation for all game, coarse and sea anglers in England. If you’re not a member, please support our work by joining, and take advantage of the new membership benefits on offer exclusively to Angling Trust individual members. Adult membership is just £25 a year and under 18s can join for FREE.

What we do – in brief The Angling Trust has a wide range of activities which all contribute to promoting and protecting fish and fishing.

Protecting Angling Access – we campaign about local and national issues affecting angling and fisheries. When angling is banned by a local council on a lake or pier, we use the media and other methods to stop this happening and to open up access again. We also promote the benefits of angling to the government and its agencies so that angling access is encouraged rather than restricted.

Campaigns to protect fish stocks – we campaign to stop commercial fishing, dredging, pollution, over-abstraction, habitat damage, the spread of fish disease, alien species and many other threats to freshwater and marine fish stocks. We employ professional staff to persuade companies, the government and quangos that they should change policy and practice to protect our fish.

Legal Action – our unique in-house team of lawyers take legal action against polluters and others who damage our member clubs and fishery owners’ rivers or lakes. Our aim is to get them to stop the damage and compensate our members for any damage caused so that we can put it right. This action is in addition to any criminal prosecution taken by the Environment Agency, which sees all the money from fines disappear into the Treasury! We are currently fighting more than 60 legal cases throughout the UK. We also advise our member clubs and fisheries about legal issues which helps protect the angling industry.

Promoting Angling – our angling development team works throughout the country to promote participation by people of all ages and to develop the sport of angling. This involves training and licensing angling coaches and encouraging clubs to develop junior sections and to link up with schools. We also promote the many positive contributions that angling makes to society in the media and to government. All this work helps ensure a safe future for the sport we all love.

Angling Competitions – we manage England’s national teams for coarse, game and sea angling and find sponsorship to support the costs of our best anglers competing on the international stage. We also run a wide range of national and regional matches for thousands of Angling Trust members in all disciplines.

Member Benefits – as the largest angling organisation in the country, we can offer our members fantastic special offers and discounts. These include free public liability insurance, discounts on tackle at www.anglingdirect.co.uk and 15% off at Millets and Blacks. We also have a Fish for Free programme which allows members to earn points every time they shop at over 200 web sites, including Amazon, eBay, the Trainline and Majestic Wine. Points can be spent to buy an EA rod licence, fishing permits and tackle.

Highlights We’ve achieved a huge amount since we were set up in 2009. Here are a few highlights: Securing support from all three political parties for our Angling Manifesto on the eve of the General Election; Hosting receptions with the British Association of Shooting and Conservation at all the party political conferences to promote the importance of angling and fisheries conservation; Getting the Fisheries Minister to agree to designating a senior civil servant as a point of contact for the Angling Trust to represent recreational sea anglers’ concerns; Winning six freshwater environmental campaigns ranging from barriers to fish migration to surface water pollution; Objecting to more than 100 damaging hydropower schemes nationwide and fighting for a national voice for anglers on the development of the good practice guidelines for developers of hydropower; Fighting successfully for more than £20,000 in compensation for two angling clubs on the River Wharfe, and another £20,000 for a club on the Derwent after pollution blighted their fishing; Fighting a further 65 legal cases on behalf of our members; Providing legal advice on more than 500 separate matters for member angling clubs, syndicates and individual riparian owners on issues ranging from access to zander; Applying, alongside WWF-UK, for a Judicial Review of Defra for the failure of the Environment Agency’s River Basin Management plans to implement the Water Framework Directive. This led to new funding and commitment to delivery of the Directive by the government and EA; Launching two new national angling competitions and finding £40,000 sponsorship for the unsponsored England coarse angling teams; Successfully delivering a pilot project to address poaching and illegal fishing in the Swindon area through our Building Bridges project and extending this to the East of England; Supporting a nationwide Crimestoppers initiative to protect fish health by providing a confidential helpline for anglers to report illegal fish movements and imports; Launching the Fred J Taylor Award for environmental stewardship to promote the work that anglers do to protect and improve the environment; Successfully campaigning for a review of the licensing for the control of cormorants to enable anglers to take action more easily on waters they own or lease; Setting up regional forums for our members to share their views and news. For more details of these stories and the most recent news, please check out our web site at www.anglingtrust.net Members are eligible to attend our regional meetings which allow you to find out what the organisation has been doing on your behalf, and to provide feedback so that we tackle the issues you are most concerned about. We are doing more and more for the benefit of all angling every week. Now we just need YOU to support us by becoming an individual member.

Why YOU should join the Angling Trust

Angling faces a wide range of threats. We can protect ourselves from these threats by urging politicians and other decision-makers to take decisions which respect our interests as anglers and stop damage to our rivers, lakes and seas. To achieve this, we need funds to run media campaigns, commission expert reports and take legal action. We also need more members so that we have more political influence with government. The more members that join, the more we will be able to do to fight for the future of your fishing. Wear the Three Fishes badge with Pride, and join the Angling Trust today.

What YOU get for individual membership

  Individual membership of the Angling Trust costs just £25, less than 50p a week. Members receive free public liability insurance for all their angling activities worldwide (excluding USA & Canada) and monthly e-mail updates, along with two paper magazines each year reporting on all the activities of the Angling Trust and its legal arm, Fish Legal. 18 – 21 year olds can join for £10 and under-18s can join free of charge and enjoy all our membership benefits. Thank you! We think all anglers should join us to support the work we do, which is important for the future of our fish and fishing. If you want the next generation to enjoy the fishing you enjoy, then please join us now. As well as supporting our work, and being part of the single national organisation for all anglers, you also get the benefit of massive savings on the fishing tackle and clothing you need (and the stuff you don’t really need but will buy anyway!).

Thank you for your support.

www.anglingtrust.net

Tel: 0844 7700616

[email protected]

Tinker and His mum