Fishing licences fund project to improve Wiltshire's River Avon
The Environment Agency's reinvesting cash they get in from anglers
Money raised through fishing enthusiasts being rod licences is being put back into our waterways.
The Environment Agency says they've spent £40,000 of anglers' fees on improvements across Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset.
The cash has gone into their Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP), with every penny the Environment Agency receives in fishing licence income reinvested 'to protect both the sport of angling and England’s waterways'.
In Wiltshire, money's gone towards planting water-crowfoot plants in the Hampshire Avon catchment area, which surrounds Salisbury, Amesbury and down towards Fordingbridge.
Water-crowfoot, or Ranunculus is a keystone chalk stream species and an indicator of good habitat quality that provides food and shelter to a vast array of invertebrate species and, in turn, fish and other aquatic fauna.
The Environment Agency says the Hampshire Avon catchment lacks healthy populations of plant in places, so the funding has helped to create 'new strongholds of water-crowfoot and speed up its spread across the catchment'.
Heidi Stone, Environment Agency Fisheries Manager, said:
“The FIP is a great example of how rod licence income is being reinvested, resulting in sustainable fish stocks and directly benefiting angling and local communities. The programme recognises and invests in a wide programme of work to help maintain, improve and develop fisheries.
“Looking to the future, we will continue to work with our partners, angling clubs and fisheries to identify and deliver high quality projects, the more people who buy a licence and go fishing, the more we can invest in this way.”
Since FIP was established in 2015, over 1,000 projects have been successfully completed, with a total of nearly £7 million reinvested from fishing licence sales alone.