Mismanagement of Irish fish stock is killing our angling tourism trade. Please sign this petition to ask that Inland Fisheries cease the practice of culling pike and Coarse fish in Irish waters. The IFI are culling our stocks of predator and coarse fish under the guise of trout stocks preservation. The truth of the matter is that they are keeping the trout anglers happy because they believe that pike and coarse fish are destroying trout stocks. But we know that this is wrong and more to the point, the IFI know its wrong. If you remove the pike stocks you get a population explosion of small pike and roach that will destroy the trout stocks and completely destroy the ecology of the water.
An example of the mentality of some of these west of Ireland trout anglers was clearly seen at a competition on one of the big lakes some years back, when one angler started a debate on the lack of trout that were brought in after the competition, he said, last year we took in over 600 trout, this year only 200, it must be the pike and the eastern Europeans. The irony of it. We've also seen a banner at a TROUT PRESERVATION SOCIETY competition, under the said banner there were numerous DEAD trout being weighed in. The slaughter of our fish has done untold damage to our angling tourism. Some towns around the country that were once bursting at the seams with UK and European anglers are now ghost towns. Please help us by signing this peitition. We need over 10,000 signatures to fight this, we believe we can do it. Good luck to all.
This petition has been signed by the Anglers of Ireland and the Many Anglers from around Europe, mainly the UK that have stopped coming here on angling holidays because of the Policies of IFI on gill Netting of pike and Coarse fish in Ireland. It has been proven by Debbie Pedreschi that pike are native to Ireland and that their primary diet is roach. Even with this knowledge IFI continue to destroy the natural habitat and welfare of the trout, pike and coarse fish in our western lakes, lakes that thrived for thousands of years without the input of man. Your actions have cost this country countless amounts of money in lost tourism, this can be seen by just a few hundred of the comments from ex-visiting anglers. We urge you to stop this madness and move with the times in relation to fish management. Pike are the apex predator that these waters need to keep the populations of roach and small pike down, which in turn allows the reproduction and growth of the trout. We want a total change to the Pike and Trout policies. IFI should not have published the last pike policy when they did because the report from Debbie moved the goal posts. PIKE ARE INDIGENOUS. PIKE PRIMARILY EAT ROACH, PIKE KEEP ROACH AND SMALL PIKE IN CONTROLL.
Copies of this petition will be sent to Board Failte, B&B Ireland, Irish Ferries, the Minister, the Attorney General and to every Business in the hospitality sector across Ireland to show them what the ex-Visiting anglers are saying and why they are not coming here anymore, this is just the start, we will be doing a lot more, for instance, we will film your people electro fishing and destroying tons of prime coarse fish that could be moved around the country to improve our canals and get them back to where they once were as fisheries. We will also be looking at the cost of this gill netting campaign to the tax payer and asking you to show the financial benefits as well as the proof that this action actually has any merit in trout conservation. Stop the Culling, the anglers have spoken.
