Poachers expose salmon defences

ON RTÉ’s Prime Time programme of Tuesday, February 8, which dealt with our dangerously low wild salmon stocks, South Western Regional Fisheries Board CEO Aidan Barry told the nation that the salmon policing system in his area had been transformed.

The claim was blown out of the water when the programme showed poachers - operating in the month of February - in broad daylight just a few miles away in an area under Mr Barry’s jurisdiction.

That the Prime Time team was able to screen current footage of illegal netting came as no great surprise to clubs affiliated to the Killarney Valley Anglers’ Federation.

This federation has made numerous written complaints, but they have been rejected time and again by Mr Barry. The visual evidence produced by Prime Time vindicated those complaints.

Correspondence from Mr Barry to the Killarney federation stated that salmon poaching was not taking place; rather these people were fishing for mullet, dredging for mussels and even collecting seed.

Dredging for mussels and collecting seed while using monofilament net? When Mr Barry told viewers the policing system in his area had been transformed over the past five to ten years, he was telling a different story to that of his fisheries officers who have stated that poaching was rife in the south-west.

And members of the North Western Regional Fisheries Board did not concur either when, in 2001, they instructed their CEO, Vincent Roche, officially to complain to Mr Barry that drift-netting continued in the south-west long after the season closed.

With the Prime Time cameras highlighting the ongoing illegal netting of our wild salmon, isn’t it time that the onus for providing protection of our dwindling stocks was taken from the South West Regional Fisheries Board?

Hopefully, the inland fisheries review will take stock of the inadequacy of our current system.

Jerome Dowling

PRO

Kerry Angling Federation

Castlegregory

Co Kerry