Aquaculture and Fisheries Bill – Have Your Say!
On 6th December the Scottish Government issued a consultation document setting out proposals for the content of a new Aquaculture and Fisheries Bill that will go before the Scottish Parliament in 2012.
You can read the consultation document at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/12/06081229/0 .
With a few exceptions, the proposals in the consultation document are mainly directed towards regulating the activities of marine fish farms, sea fisheries or salmon fisheries, and thus not relevant to coarse angling.
However it does invite comments on the issue of funding public services that support freshwater fisheries in general and, perhaps most important, invites consultees to put forward their own suggestions for items that require new or amended legislation.
SFCA believes this is a valuable opportunity to raise a number of matters of concern to coarse anglers in relation to the protection of coarse fish stocks and the way in which access for angling is regulated.
The SFCA Committee has agreed a draft response which makes specific proposals on these matters, as well as answering those of the consultation questions in which there is a coarse angling interest. The draft response can be read by clicking the following link:
Aquaculture & Fisheries Bill Consultation document – Dec 11 – SFCA Draft Response (Ver 1.1)
We want to be confident that the SFCA response reflects the consensus of views among our member clubs and individual members.
We are therefore offering you the opportunity to comment on what we have drafted, and let us know if there are any other issues you wish us to raise, before our response is finalised and sent to the Scottish Government.
Please send your comments (or those of your club, if appropriate) to chairman@sfca.co.uk no later than 31st January 2012 so that we have sufficient time to do any necessary redrafting.
We would also urge you, both as individuals and member clubs, to submit responses of your own directly to the Scottish Government, even if you only write to say that you support the SFCA response.
The procedure for responding is set out in the consultation document, and responses have to be submitted no later than Friday, 2 March 2012.
Tags: Consultation, Protecting Fish, Protecting Rights and Access
I fully support the SFCA effort to get legal protection for coarse fish in Scottish waters, way overdue.
keep up the good work Ron, it is possibly one of the hardest things to push through.