The watchdog that lost its bite

And a damning report to close the news:

The watchdog that lost its bite - Salmon & Trout Conservation

Salmon & Trout Conservation reports on the Environment Agency as it turns twenty-five years old

Report concludes that Agency is failing to protect rivers, not monitoring, inspecting or prosecuting enough, with its hands tied by central Government

Salmon & Trout Conservation (S&TC) has today published “Doing its job?”, a report on the state of the Environment Agency and its role in protecting English rivers, lakes and streams.

The Report shows that:

over the last decade or more, what little progress there had been in improving the overall quality and ecological status of the freshwater environment in England has plateaued. Only 14% of English water bodies are in good ecological condition.
stock surveys show 59% of those water bodies are not achieving good or better status for fish.
39 out of our 42 main salmon rivers are ‘at risk’ or ‘probably at risk’.
despite a legal requirement on the Agency to establish and maintain a coherent and comprehensive monitoring programme to assess water status across England, we have a very limited picture overall of the actual situation in the freshwater environment.
monitoring by the Agency has reduced dramatically over recent years and looks set to reduce further both in terms of monitoring the wider environment and also monitoring of polluting discharges to and abstraction from rivers.

Nick Measham, Chief Executive of S&TC said: “The Environment Agency turned 25 years old this month but our rivers will not be celebrating. Despite a quarter of a century of its oversight, the freshwater aquatic environment is still heavily polluted, fragmented and we face a biodiversity crisis with many freshwater species in steep decline or, in the case of the Atlantic salmon, at risk of extinction. We are at a point when business as usual is no longer an option if we are to reverse wilful river damage and habitat destruction”.