The Cull of the Wild – Article

[anonymous]

Ran across this in an Oct issue of Time.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1642444_1851505_1851485,00.html

Thought some of our South African friends might have some comment.

[Daryl Human]

Yes, it is true! There has been much contraversy surrounding this issue!
To my knowledge, the streams in the Western Cape are the ones that have been targeted for eradication. Here are some links to some more information:
http://www.theflyfisher.co.za/content/view/73/91/
http://www.nisc.co.za/oneAbstract?absId=1420.

Dullstroom is a town known for its privatised fly fishing venues. There is trout fishing all over!

[Mike McKeown]

Let’s start by stating that flyfishing in SA is a multimillion dollar industry. There are many jobs that rely solely on it; some towns are completely sustained on the revenue generated by fly fishing.

Then let’s say that flyfishing is not solely reliant on trout, we have “9” indigenous yellow fish species, which are seriously good game on a fly rod. I say “nine” because there are only six true yellowfish, the other three are closely related, and we consider them to be kin… Of these “9” species 4 are rated as extremely vulnerable. Of which 2 are thought to have been extinct, until some localized pockets of fish were discovered, one of which only exists in 4 pools on one stream.

There are many reasons that they are so endangered, one of which is alien and invasive species, one of which is trout, other include small and largemouth bass and carp. In my mind, the bass play a more significant roll, but because they are harder to eradicate, they will be controlled later in the conservation process. There is also a local predator that has crossed water sheds and impacted on the endangered fish. Other reasons include river degradation, water over utilization by farmers, valley and catchment degradation, etc…

I firmly believe that there is cause to remove aliens

[Darryl Lampert]

Ran across this in an Oct issue of Time.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1642444_1851505_1851485,00.html

Thought some of our South African friends might have some comment.

Hi Scott,

This is something a lot of us feel quite strongly about for different reasons.

[Author]

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