Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 14 February 2018.
Okay. Well, I understand the Cabinet Secretary's position on that. There are very diverse reasons for the decline in fish stocks in our rivers. One of them is predation by fish-eating birds. There's a great deal of evidence now. The Angling Trust has produced a database, for example, of predators within inland situations. Apparently, cormorants are now a significant factor in this. Although they're fundamentally seabirds, lots of them are taking fish from our rivers and posing, I think, a dire threat to, particularly, young salmon. There are licences, which are granted, for taking predators and so reducing the scale of this problem. I wonder if the Cabinet Secretary would consider making it easier to qualify for these licences. This at least will be a partial solution to a growing problem that we've got with our rivers.