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Conservation Matters: Gethyn Thomas and the River Towy.

For over 30 years, the Carmarthenshire Fishermen’s Federation (CFF),

river anglers and conservation groups have witnessed the continued decline in  

migratory fish running the river Towy. The situation today is critical, with  

salmon stocks in danger of teetering on the brink of collapse and sea trout stocks unstable. Having watched the situation deteriorate, some Anglers have decided to

highlight the problem and do whatever they can to alleviate the situation.

 

Walking the river while listening to Gethyn Thomas, it is easy to

recognise a passionate and knowledgeable conservationist, Gethyn volunteers many

hours of work on the river and has a very simple and accurate view of the

problems today, ask him what the river needs, he'll tell you ;

 

1.    Improved Water Quality and Quantity.

2.    Improved Food Supply.

3.    An improved and consistent stocking policy to Kick-Start recovery.

 

High above the valley is the magnificent Llyn Brianne Reservoir. Built

in an area of breathtaking natural beauty, it was completed in 1972 by damming

a section of the river. The Dam is operated by Dwr Cymru Welsh Water. The

flow of the Towy is regulated by water being continually released from the

Dam to support abstraction at Nantgaredig near the estuary. The Towy

supplies a large part of south Wales with drinking water.

 

Because of the night-time abstraction regimes, flows through the estuary

are at their least when fish are attempting to run the river, a resolution

to this would be beneficial, however, it is acknowledged to be a highly complex,

almost "catch 22" scenario.

 

The Angling clubs would like to have easily accessible online river

level reports from automated monitoring stations, but it seems that the Environment

Agency cannot yet provide this information although it is readily available in  

Scotland.

 

Gethyn is also very active in a CFF "voluntary Catch and Release"

program where anglers are rewarded either for releasing Salmon or for donating

them to Viv Bradshaw at the Llyn Y Fan Hatchery where Viv strips the fish of  

eggs/milt to incubate "Towy" fish which can later be released back into

the river.

 

Since the inception of the Dam, a mitigation stocking of 6,250  

Parr provided by Welsh Water are supposed to make up for the fish unable

to reach spawning areas upstream of the Dam.  This number is pitiful when compared with the 250,000 fry and Parr stocked into the Tyne - even though the spawning area truncated by Brianne is almost half that cut off by the Tyne's Kielder reservoir.  The CFF is restricted to releasing an additional 30,000 Parr each year into the river, but even this number is far too few to compensate for the long lost hundreds of previously spawning salmon and sea trout.

 

A consistent and correctly assessed program of stocking is needed to give the Towy salmon and indeed sea trout a fighting chance while habitat improvements are being addressed.

 

The EAW are not encouraging stocking programs as the way forward, maybe

if they could be convinced to try this on the Towy as a test case, it would

lead to some rethinking on balancing more stocking programs with river  

habitat programs. Is the potential cost again overriding the logical  

solution?

 

At Anglersvoice we try to promote Conservation work by individuals and

volunteers. The CFF/River Towy C&R Program will be receiving a donation from Today's Fly Fisher, if you would like to find out more about Gethyn, the CFF or would like to find out how to donate Towy Salmon to the Hatchery, please go to  

http://www.carmarthenshire.org.uk/ , or write to Kevin@anglersvoice.com.

Gethyn and Viv

Llynbrianne from the top