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The ABDF and the Barbel Society are inviting you to a week long family friendly barbel event on the Loire Valley from Wednesday 4th to Tuesday 10th of April 2018.

To register please click the link HERE
Contacts:
Christophe Pelhate – christophepelhate@hotmail.com
Terry Harman – harmant1@sky.com
Steve Choney – stephen.choney@cgl.org.uk

Fewer than one in five UK rivers currently meet Good Ecological Status standards required by the European Union’s Water Framework Directive and nearly 25% are at risk of over-abstraction. As a result, half of all freshwater wildlife, including many fish species, are in decline and 13% are threatened with extinction.

This is why the Angling Trust is backing a major new campaign spearheaded by WWF-UK to press government for better protection for our precious rivers from over-abstraction and sewage pollution. The Nature Needs You campaign asks you to take action to help safeguard our rivers.

On the campaign website there’s a simple form through which you can send a message directly to your MP and tell them why it’s important they act to protect your favourite river. There’s also an interactive river map where you can find out how healthy your local river is. We need you to get on board because there’s no one that deteriorating water quality affects more than us anglers.

Send a message to your MP

Find out how healthy your river is

The ask is for your MP to put pressure on the new Environment Secretary Michael Gove to deliver on the government’s long-overdue promise to reform the outdated water abstraction regime and to exert stricter controls over sewer overflows.

More than 3,800 letters have already been sent to 576 individual MPs in England and Wales, with at least one MP writing directly to Michael Gove asking for the campaign aims to be addressed.

If you’re involved with an angling club or consultative organisation, please consider holding your own event by requesting one of the specially designed River Engagement Packs. These packs contain postcards to send to MPs, a fold-out guide, a more detailed pamphlet that […]

The Angling Trust joined Action for the River Kennet (ARK), WWF and the Environment Agency to celebrate the completion of a £30 million project to reduce abstraction levels from the famous Wiltshire and Berkshire chalk stream.

The event, held at Mildenhall near Marlborough, was to formally mark the commissioning of Thames Water’s new Axford pipeline, running 18 kilometres from the company’s Blunsdon reservoir north of Swindon, to Whitefield reservoir to the south-east of the town.

The pipeline will see a seven million litre per day reduction in water being abstracted by the water company – protecting the River Og and the River Kennet downstream of Marlborough during periods of dry weather.

The project followed years of lobbying against excessive water abstraction from the Upper Kennet, by angling and conservation groups backed by local MP and Angling Trust Ambassador Richard Benyon.

The Angling Trust, the Environment Agency and Action for the River Kennet (ARK) have long claimed that water removed at Axford and Ogbourne treatment works, and not returned to the Kennet, has had a detrimental impact on the river, which is listed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is one of England’s best known chalk stream fisheries.

Martin Salter, National Campaigns Coordinator for the Angling Trust, who has fished the Kennet since childhood said: “The Kennet is an iconic English chalk stream which has sadly declined as a fishery, particularly in the lower reaches.

“It has suffered from the reopening of the Kennet and Avon canal in the 90s which resulted in the siltation of many of the vital gravel spawning areas and from low summer flows caused by over abstraction in the upper river.

“The Angling Trust has been lobbying for the Axford pipeline to be built […]

An evening with Steve Pope and Lawrence Breakspear

Sunday 23rd April @ 7PM

Aston Manor Cricket Club
Church Lane
Perry Barr
Birmingham
B42 2LA

Free for BS Members
Non-members £3