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In this edition:

What is the Recfishing forum?
The Forum on Recreational Fisheries and Aquatic Environment has been established to help the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) understand what can be complex issues affecting 25 million EU angling constituents. The European Parliament deals with important legislation which has a direct impact on fish stocks and the aquatic environment.
Effectively protecting 30% of EU seas by 2030: recreational anglers are part of the solution 
On 20 April, the RecFishing Forum hosted a webinar on recreational angling and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), co-chaired by MEP Isabel Carvalhais and MEP Søren Gade. After a video keynote speech by the Portuguese Minister of the Sea, Ricardo Serrão Santos, former Member of the European Parliament and supporter of the Forum, four panellists and more than 60 participants discussed the added value that recreational anglers can bring in marine protected and strictly protected areas.
 
Oliver Portrat, CEO of the European Fishing Tackle Trade Association (EFTTA) and David Vertegaal, Marine Public Affairs Officer representing the European Anglers Alliance (EAA) welcomed the objective of protecting 30% of sea areas and called for an ecology optimised approach of recreational fishing activities in MPAs: “Do not forget that recreational fishing, and in particular recreational angling, is a very selective fishing activity and can even be non-extractive when practiced as ‘catch and release’. It would be ineffective to put all kinds of fishing gears, all kinds of ‘extractive’ activities on the same level and simply ban angling from these areas.”  Olivier Portrat added that angling tourism is the ideal solution to secure the acceptance and ownership of the local population, as it is, in many parts of Europe, the only form of tourism and income for those populations.
 

Click here to know more about the event (agenda, panellists’ presentation, press release).

Click here to read the event report 
EU nature restoration targets : 10 recommendations for river ecosystems

Living Rivers Europe is a coalition of five environmental and angling organisations: the European Anglers Alliance, the World Wildlife Fund, the European Environmental Bureau, the European Rivers Network, the Nature Conservancy and Wetlands International. Reacting to some aspects of the European Commission’s Biodiversity Strategy, it published a scoping paper on EU restoration targets, free-flowing rivers and freshwater ecosystems

If the EU is serious about achieving the goals set in the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, then any legally binding restoration targets that the European Commission committed to propose in 2021 will need to drive the restoration of freshwater ecosystems and reverse the steep decline of freshwater biodiversity. 

Amongst others, Living Rivers Europe recommends increasing the current target for free-flowing rivers from “at least 25,000 km” to 15% of all rivers to be restored to a free-flowing state by 2030 through inter alia barrier removal and floodplain restoration.

Click here to read the recommendations
Lessons learned from the sea bass pilot project 

Following the European Parliament’s request in 2017, a pilot project to explore the control and monitoring tools for recreational sea bass fishing was conducted in 2019 and 2020. In December 2020, the European Commission published the final report of the “Control scheme for recreational catches of sea bass” pilot project.

Based on the analysis of the current schemes and on surveys of recreational fishers and other stakeholders, the pilot project provided recommendations to improve the efficiency of the monitoring and control scheme for marine recreational fisheries. The following guiding ideas are underlined by the report:

  • A focus on resource conservation and better engagement of recreational fishers; 

  • Compulsory registration and reporting (in time) of standardised data sets. Registration and catch reporting using near real time web and app-based solutions; 

  • More reliable data and improved stock assessment modelling capacity supports scientific advice legitimacy towards recreational fishers; 

  • Better targeted and streamlined control and inspection activities using catch declarations; 

  • Improved information exchange and the set-up of new information flows back to users (studies, stock status, local control measures, etc.). 

The final report was presented at the occasion of a webinar organised by the European Commission, to which the EAA and the EFTTA participated as panellists. Read more about the webinar by clicking here.  

More information about the pilot project’s final report here.

Introducing… the Norwegian Association of Hunters and Anglers 

This article is part of a series dedicated to the presentation of angling associations across Europe. For this edition, we introduce the EAA member from Norway: NJFF - Norges Jeger - og Fiskerforbund.

The Norwegian Hunters' and Fishermen's Association (NJFF) is the country's only nationwide organisation for hunters and anglers. It gathers 550 local associations, spread across the country in 19 different county associations. Inherited from their Vikings ancestors, the practice of fishing remains very popular for present-day Norwegians. Every year, no less than 42% of the Norwegian population enjoy angling. This unsurprisingly justifies the common saying boldly claiming that “Norwegians have saltwater streaming through their veins”.

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Copyright © 2020 RecFishing Forum, All rights reserved.

The Forum Secretariat is provided by two EU associations:
 

EAA, the European Anglers Alliance        
EFTTA, the European Fishing Tackle Trade Association

Contact us:
Tél:   +32 (0) 2 720 0073
Email: julie
@eaa-europe.eu

Twitter: @RecFishingEP







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