Following the publication of a report highlighting a “serious decline in fishing in Wales”, North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has called for a Welsh Government Statement on the protection of fisheries in Wales.
Speaking in this week’s Business Statement, Mr Isherwood said issues regarding the failure to protect fisheries in Wales, in consequence of Welsh Government policy, were covered in the national angling paper ‘The Angler’s Mail’.
He said:
“This highlighted a serious decline in fishing in Wales. It said that the Welsh equivalent of the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, had been branded no longer fit for purpose by fishing and environmental groups, and that of the 6,886 reports of water pollution that Natural Resources Wales received between 2013 and 2016, only 60 per cent were investigated, and there were just 41 prosecutions and 10 civil sanctions, amounting to less than 1 per cent of incidents reported.
“It said ‘There has been a steep decline in fish numbers in recent years in Wales.The regulator needs to take a much tougher stance but…The organisation is unwieldy, too bureaucratic and they don’t seem to have a strategy’.
“They did say that they were meeting with officials in the Welsh Assembly, by which I presume they mean the Welsh Government, to demand action, concluding that there’s been a national failure of Welsh Government to tackle the problem. Given particularly their reference to Welsh Government in the article, and their reference to a meeting with officials, could we have a statement to bring us up to date not only on what was concluded, but what actions, if any, have resulted?”
The Leader of the House, Jane Hutt, told Mr Isherwood “it would be helpful if you wrote to the Cabinet Secretary on this matter as her officials are already engaged in that discussion,”