Lynx. Beavers. The chaos that is rural policy making

Life on a Chalkstream 15th August 2025   Two things collided in my week. Firstly, it was the headline that 72% of people favoured the introduction of the lynx, absent from Britain for many centuries, into Northumberland’s Kielder Forest.   Here we go again I thought, another group of rampant rewilders, rolling the ground to steamroller the likes of Defra and Natural England into an ‘experimental’ release that would, of course, become permanent in time. However, the statistic was expertly dissected by James Heale in The Spectator, who pointed out that the 72% was the percentage in favour who visited a pro-lynx event where almost half of the attendees were self-styled environmentalists, so a pretty self-selecting sample.   Heale went on to suggest that the yea or nay for any release should be determined by the locals alone, and sheep farmers in particular, who literally have the most skin in the game. Heale, I am with you all the way. We deployed similar arguments in regard to beavers. But nobody listened to us a decade ago, I suspect nobody will listen to you today.    If you want some evidence of this pattern of behaviour you only need to look to an article in The Guardian 30/June which quotes both Tony Juniper chair of Natural England, and Paul O’Donoghue chief executive of the Lynx UK Trust. Juniper said he would be ‘absolutely delighted’ if the lynx was reintroduced but called for ‘… more engagement to understand how communities that would be living with these animals would be able to continue with what they do …’ Well, we know what that word engagement is code for.    O’Donoghue on the other hand is less versed in the ways of quango speak, stating more engagement was a waste of time and money for “unless he (Juniper) has been living under a rock for the past 30 years, Tony Juniper must know that sheep farmers will never change their position on lynx reintroduction, making more calls for more engagement utterly futile’. Err, that might just be because farmers know more about sheep and predators than you do, Mr O’Donoghue and actually have to live with the effects of the decisions you wish to make on their behalf.   The other event was the regular monthly update on all things farming from land agents Strutt & Parker. Being the avaricious type that I am, I clicked on the link that lists the latest largesse being gifted by you, the taxpayer, on the farming community. Blow me down but nine years on since Liz Truss (her short time as PM belies her long shadow} made the beaver releases official we can now apply for grants to ameliorate any financial or physical harm caused by beavers. Of course, it is complete bloody madness to take with one hand and give with another but that is the current state of rural policy making.   So, if you think you might be in line for a payout for beaver protection and management capital items there are three categories BC3: Crop protection fencing mesh and wire for permanent crops. BC4: Tree guard post and wire. BC5: Expert dam management. Get you application into the Rural Payments Agency who will then arrange an inspection by none other than, Natural England.   By the way Si and Charley, the Fishing Breaks river keepers are off to Devon in December to obtain a CL51 beaver licence training certificate which, joy of joy, will allow them to take the CL50 licence training to capture, transport and re-release beavers or modify or remove beaver dams, burrows and lodges. Guess who runs all this, and not for free? Natural England of course.     Angling for headlines   I was full of hope when I heard Vice President J D Vance and Foreign Secretary David Lammy were heading out on a fishing trip whilst the Veep was visiting Lammy at Chevening House, his grace-and-favour residence in Kent.   Immediately I had visions of the pair setting off, in the fly fishing footsteps of Eisenhower, Carter and Bush to sample the delights of the River Stour, the best chalkstream in that south-eastern part of England. Or perhaps accompanied by Secret Service divers and helicopters, the pair were to drift in a boat after the monster trout of Bewl Reservoir. What a great advert for British  fishing and the beauty of our countryside, I thought. But no, the pair choose to stand next to a dirty pond in the grounds of Chevening, purportedly in pursuit of carp.   Dressed like a pair of unemployed 1970’s menswear catalogue models Lammy and Vance looked so awkward and misplaced that it was painful to watch. If these two alumni of Harvard, both of modest upbringing, hoped to demonstrate the common touch with this photo call they were as woefully unsuccessful in that pursuit as they were in catching any fish.     BREAKING NEWS: David Lammy did not have a fishing licence and has blamed the oversight on an "administrative error". But do not worry he has now bought one so everyone, including the EA, is happy.   So remember that next time you go fishing do not bother to buy a licence and be reassured that in the very unlikely event that you get collared by the Angling Trust's Voluntary Bailiff Service patrol just blame your spouse for "administrative error", pop online to buy one pronto and all will be well. I don't think so!     You're nicked Lammy!     River Test wins the right to sue   So, the River Test is a person thanks to Test Valley Borough Council who have voted to recognise our river as an independent legal entity. In fact, this is not the first river to be first so recognised as the River Ouse in Sussex was given similar status in 2023.   What does it mean? Well, the River Test may now sue a person or company for damaging its quality or impeding the flow. Quite how this will actually happen in practice I am not exactly sure. I assume a special interest group will take up the cudgels on behalf of the River Test on a particular issue using lawfare to succeed where bodies such as the Environment Agency fail. When you consider the vast amount of environmental legislatio, and the hugely complex and expensive regulatory bodies that exist to enforce that legislation, it is a sad fact that local councils have to take action where national government has failed us.   PS I was a bit surprised at The Telegraph article that carried this news for it featured a lovely photo of ….. me (on the right) fishing at Whitchurch Fulling Mill. It took me a while to even recall when the photo was taken. It was for a feature about 15 years ago in a country magazine that has long ceased to exist. I can only assume the photographer sold the photos from that day to an agency. By the way, Whitchurch Fulling Mill is as lovely today as it was back then. It is a beat ideal for one or two Rods, and if you like wading the upper section is subline and stuffed with fish. Click here for details .....       Growing pains   A few years before the pandemic, which seems like a far distant country now, it became clear that Fishing Breaks was growing out of the office in The Mill building which we had been in for fifteen years or so.   For a while I cast around for somewhere suitable away from Nether Wallop until my eye was caught by scrubland behind our garages, workshop and storage buildings opposite the Mill. The trouble was that that scrubland was a steep chalk bank. No matter said my gung-ho architect, lets excavate. So, dig we did calculating the metric amount to be trailered away. It was a lot. In fact, a lot more than we miscalculated because the volume of chalk increases by 40% when dug. Fortunately, a neighbour was in need of chalk for a new access road so many hundreds of trailer loads later, we had our site onto which the office was successfully built.     However, what remained was the scar of the bank which the office looked up to. Deploying my inner nature self, I set out to create a wildflower bank for chalk loving plants. What better, I reasoned, than a chalkstream specialist overlooked by a chalk down in miniature. The reality was somewhat harder. As my research dictated, we spread a thin layer of poor spoil over the chalk and, at huge expense, spread a microscopic bag of suitable seed. After year one, next to nothing. After year two, a healthy, but unwanted collection of nettles and dock plants. I concluded, maybe uncharitably, I had been conned by the wildflower seed supplier. What next?   I pondered this on one of my downland walks until I had a brain flash of the bleedin’ obvious – harvest the seed from the down itself! So, in late summer, armed with a bucket, I did exactly that, randomly hand stripping seeds from all manners of plants. Judged by what I had paid previously I had a £1,000 worth in less than an hour. The result, I think you would agree, is pretty impressive.   The bank is festooned with butterflies and bees, home to all manner of other insects. We have foxes that come to sunbathe (maybe that explains no rabbits) and deer are regular visitors. All that said, however natural the bank might look in its summer pomp it requires, like most manmade ‘wildflower’ beds considerable human intervention. Two or three times a year we go through it to pull out plants like nettles that would otherwise outgrow and crowd out the others whilst in the autumn we cut it all down, removing the cuttings to prevent them rotting down and improving the soil – downland plants like poor soil with few nutrients.   All in all, I am pretty pleased with the outcome though I do wonder from time to time what we would have ended up with had I persisted with mail order seeds.         TIME IS PRECIOUS. USE IT FISHING     The Mill, Heathman Street, Nether Wallop, Stockbridge, England SO20 8EW United Kingdom 01264 781988 www.fishingbreaks.co.uk Check out our social media

• The real Cunliffe Report

 

Greetings!   You may not have realised it but there were three versions of the Cunliffe Report into the water industry. The first was issued to the keyboard warriors, who raged even before it was published, that nationalisation was off the table. Frankly, for these people anything short of ritual execution of all water industry executives was a cop out, with a government run industry the answer to all that ails our waterways despite the unhelpful evidence that shows the nationalised Scottish and Northern Irish industries, along with the not-for-profit Welsh industry have worse pollution records than their English counterparts.   The second version of the report was issued exclusively to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed where his office had clearly helpfully expunged all references by Cunliffe which stated the inconvenient fact that consumer prices will have to rise to fund long term infrastructure improvements. However, for Reed all future price rises are off the table, but he is conveniently off the hook as the current round of price rises are already set in stone for the next five years by which time his stint at Defra will be a long distant memory.      Sir Jon Cunliffe   Of course, it is pure fantasy to imagine that we can improve our water quality without shovelling hundreds of billions into new sewage plants, new sewage processing technology, new reservoirs, a national grid of water and so on, and so on for decades to come. We are in this bind because successive governments of all political hues yoked Ofwat with the impossible brief to improve water delivery but without giving them the regulatory or financial tools to do the job.   Finally, there is, of course, the real Cunliffe Report, all 400 plus pages of it. I must admit when first announced I was sceptical that this Report would take us anywhere new but if some of the 88 recommendations are acted on then I am happy to say I was wrong. Top of those recommendations has to be the abolition of Ofwat, whilst bringing the Drinking Water Inspectorate and water-environment related functions of the Environment Agency (EA) and Natural England under the auspices of a single as-yet-to-be named super regulator.   For many, including myself, who have for years railed against the Ofwat and the EA (the Water Inspectorate is an irrelevance) the creation of a super regulator is a huge leap forward. Of course, it comes with all the usual caveats of effective implementation for Reed has told us it will take at least two years to come into being. If he wants a helping hand he can take my favoured name, the Pure Water Authority.   What was also heartening, and unexpected, was the inclusion of Natural England (NE) in the plan. What many people do not realise is that NE is the quango of all quangos, sitting as it does above the EA in the bureaucratic pecking order - if the NE does not like something, it isn’t going to happen, from the highest level of government policy to the nuts and bolts of everyday river management. Recently I was seeking permission to build a footbridge across the River Itchen. Fine by us said the EA, the permitting authority, but we need sign off from the NE who will not like it. Why not I asked? Posts they said – the NE don’t like posts in rivers because they are bad for fish. How are they bad for fish I asked? We don’t know the EA said but that is the NE default position. I pointed out there is nothing trout love more than to hang out beside a post, a rock or some kind of obstruction in a river. The bloke from the EA gave me a “I know mate but there is f**k all I can do” look before we both agreed it was a hopeless cause.   The irony of Natural England is that since its creation by Act of Parliament in 2006 the organisation tasked to “conserve, enhance and manage the natural environment for the benefit of present and future generations, thereby contributing to sustainable development.” has presided over two decades of environmental of decline. Where were they when the water companies were given carte blanche to discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage? Where were they when new reservoirs were required? Where were they when the EA consistently failed in its duty of care to our rivers? Where were they when Ofwat sided with water companies over water quality? Oh yes, I know, crafting yet another press release extolling the virtues of beavers with their apparent super powers to save our rivers. How is that going, by the way?   As you might imagine I could go on in this vein for some considerable number of words, but I will draw to a close by saying two things. Firstly, Cunliffe was surprisingly forensic – I did not anticipate that he would even consider the dreadful annual spreading of millions of tonnes of sewage sludge on farmland that creates a closed loop of pollution of land and rivers with forever chemicals and microplastics. And finally, if used as a road map for this and future generations, Sir Jon Cunliffe should be hopeful of the report he has written..      Trout & Salmon - Stardate April 1969   I was recently gifted a bundle of old copies of Trout & Salmon from which I randomly selected the April 1969 edition which as full of surprises.   Firstly, there was a double page advert announcing that Dermot Wilson had opened his mail order tackle business here at Nether Wallop Mill which was something of a coincidence. Secondly, there was an article on the River Test charting the size of fish caught on what is referred to as middle Test, that section downstream of Stockbridge and upstream of Romsey.   The writer BB Pond discloses the catch record on his regular beat for the previous year. During one week in Mayfly, 248 trout were caught with a total weight of 625lb. The best was 4lb 12oz and 55 were in the 3-4lb range. If you put this down to Mayfly madness, Pond is keen to correct you stating the numbers for the last week of August, with many fewer Rods, was 88 trout of 244lb, the best 4lb 14oz with 32 over 3lb. He goes on to report an 8lb fish at Island Estate, what we now call Island Farms.     I know there is tendency to think of big fish as a strictly modern phenomenon, but I would struggle to find these sort of catch statistics anywhere today. It is worth remembering that each and every one of these fish would have been killed; in the 1960’s catch and release was unheard of, generally considered bad form with the only fish released those under 12 inches with all grayling to be killed by order.   Were all these recorded fish wild? I think not – no river, and certainly not middle Test, would be productive enough to produce such a volume of fish and I think there is a bit of a hint in the article with Pond praising the restocking fish reared by the Houghton Club in Stockbridge. As to the rest of the magazine much of it is spookily familiar with adverts for Farlow’s, Hardy’s, Sharpe’s of Aberdeen, Veniard, Barbour and Abu Gacia. In between, the writing has not changed much with articles on Irish salmon, Yorkshire trout and 'how to fish' advice.       That was the month that was July   I was travelling this month so missed the worst, or best depending on your perspective, of our super heat. Now it seems to me, as a nation, if some of the alarmist weather headlines are to be taken at face value, we are a country well down the road to Sahara status.     However, this is not how others see us. Take for instance this advert by Range Rover. I have never seen it shown in the UK, maybe for good reason, but it definitely allies with my experience of hosting visitors from abroad who think it rains here ALL THE TIME. Anyway, kudos to the marketing team at Solihull who have come up with a genuinely laugh-out-loud advert.     Despite the sustained heat the rainfall map for July is all over the place with the northeast experiencing above average rainfall whilst the southwest was just under half average with the rest of England somewhere in between. Likewise, river flows that you might anticipate would be flashing red (Exceptionally low) everywhere, are equally all over the place. Just two of the 57 are indeed red whilst the overwhelming majority (74%) with Normal or higher than normal flows including three Notably high. Go figure ……   There is no doubt that as a breed us fly fishers are temperamentally unsuited to fishing when the thermometer passes heads into the 80’s and as for the 90’s, we all but give up hope. However, fish have to eat, and they do regardless of the air temperature so it is more about us than them when it comes to adapting to freakish English summer weather - with those who crack the code returning some amazing catches this month.  Well done to our Feedback Draw Winner for July, Anthony Buck, who fished at Barton Court right at the start of the month. Anthony certainly deserves to win having fished with us more times than any of us care to admit, dating back a decade or more.     Three of the Nigel Nunn August selection (l-r) Chalkstream Red Ant, Crackle Back Gnat & Derek… don’t ask!      August Special Offers coming next week   It will soon be 2 for 1 time! Keep an eye out for special offers coming your way next week. If you want a 24 head start sign up for the Special Offer Newsletter alert.     Quiz   The usual random collection of questions this week inspired by the date and topics today.   1)     In which year was the Range Rover first released? A) 1970 B) 1976  C) 1982   2)     Who has been around longer? Barbour, Farlow’s or Hardy’s?   3)     What TV music channel debuted on this day in 1981?   Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.   Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,     Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk     1)     1970 2)     Farlow’s 1840. Hardy’s 1872 & Barbour 1894 3)     MTV with The Buggles' song "Video Killed the Radio Star”