There's been a lot of outrage recently, particularly in places like the Forest of Dean, about the government's plans to sell off the national forests.
Something much less well known is the situation with regard to the River Wye.
I saw this information as part of an article, mostly about the woodlands, in the Church Times, of all places!
"The contrast between hands-off and hands-on is made sharper by the work of the Wye and Usk Foundation. At present, the River Wye is managed, at great expense, by four statutory bodies: the Environment Agency for Wales, the Countryside Council for Wales, Natural England and the Environment Agency for England. The same staff (for the Mid-Welsh upper Wye) must travel miles to the lower (Monmouthshire) stretch.
The Foundation, however, is a consortium of fishery-owners and conservationists, who have placed before the Government a proposal for a Wye River Board to manage the river. I [the Revd Neil Patterson, writer of the article] have heard about this Big Society initiative from one of the would-be Board, who is a farmer with a small part of the 134 miles of the Wye in his hands.
Although he would be pleased to see salmon flourishing by his water-meadows, they are not his foremost concern. None the less, looking at the management of the Wye, he has given up many hours in common cause with those who think they can find a better, cheaper and easier way to run it."
This seems to be a slightly different proposal to putting the forests into private ownership, and might even be a good thing - I don't know yet, and I'd be interested to see any further information about my favourite river.
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The Wye and Usk Foundation has worked for many years extracting money from various sources (no pun intended) and putting that money to good use.
To have them in charge of the Wye instead of all the quasi-nationalised bureaucratic monsters that now try to run it would be a great step forward.
The Wye and Usk foundation "running" the river Wye - would not bee a good idea.
The current boards that run the river are FULLY accountable to the public and a self governing self steering body running the river would not be such a good idea.
Also, I personally have seen very little evidence of the work done by WUF - they certainly haven't improved salmon stocks - that is a fact.
So where is all the money going to?
Where is the money earned from fishing?
I suggest most of the money is being used up in "Administration expenses".
The chairman of WUF paid himself over £2000 for "fishing rights" last year.
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