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State aid for fish and wildlife agencies need public support
Created by Congress in 2000, the State Wildlife Grants Program is the nation's core initiative for keeping at-risk game and nongame fish and wildlife species from becoming endangered by providing much-needed funding for conservation projects in every state and territory.
Tips on how to detect the strike while fly fishing
A reader writes, "I'm new to nymphing for trout and am having problems recognizing when to set the hook. Can you give me some suggestions?"Detecting a strike in moving water is one of the most challenging aspects of fly fishing . And, don't let the veterans tell you they feel each strike they get, it just doesn't work that way.
It doesn't matter how you do it, it's still fishing
Different strokes for different folks. Or Whatever floats your boat. In few areas could this be more true than fishing . Unlike many sports- fishing offers an endless variety of angling methods. Some of these methods fit certain personalities better than others.
DINING REVIEW: Limani Fish Grill
Full disclosure: I'm completely addicted to fish . All kinds of fish -- tilapia, mahi, snapper, sea bass. You name it, I'll eat it.
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I'm not equipped to make a judgement on quite how much polychlorinated biphenyls the human body can safely ingest. But the case against Scottish salmon farms is compelling even if their produce doesn't give you cancer.
These are ugly, polluting, loss-making, subsidy-hungry flesh factories that seem invariably to besmirch the last few untouched tracts of the British Isles. As you head north towards the tip of the isle of Raasay, Skye's smaller sibling, the single-track road gives up the ghost entirely and nature rules unimpeded and untarnished--except for a socking great chain of horrible cages lying a few yards offshore. At the end of the incomparable Torridon peninsula lies snug little, wineglass-shaped Diabaig bay--perfect but for the hideous fish farm floating in its midst.
Similar eyesores are dotted throughout the Highlands and Islands. The only consolation is that you can't see the fish excrement and chemicals in which the wretched, tail-less creatures have to live. Roughly 60,000 big fish typically occupy a volume of water about the size of three or four suburban semis. A battery chicken lives in comparative splendour.
But what about jobs? In fact, a fish farm is amazingly labour-unintensive. Once built, it needs only two or three men to keep it ticking over. Even researchers for Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the quango responsible for nurturing and subsidising fish farms, can dredge up only 4,600 full-time jobs sustained by the industry in the whole region, and that's probably an exaggeration.
Worse, the quango's study makes no allowance for the number of jobs destroyed. There is strong evidence that farmed salmon are wiping out what's left of the populations of wild salmon and sea trout, which pick up lice and disease as they pass the cages on their way upstream to spawn. A single fish farm at a river mouth can affect a vast hinterland of freshwater lochs and burns, deterring fly fishermen who would otherwise pay handsomely to fish in the region. Instead of a labour-intensive, highly skilled army of gillies and hoteliers catering to the needs of the deep-pocketed Sassenachs, there is a low-margin, commoditised industry at the mercy of rock-bottom international prices.
Salmon is now the cheapest option on the fishmonger's slab. Many farms are uneconomic. Even the profitable ones don't benefit local communities. Scottish fish farms are mostly owned by Dutch and Scandinavian corporations. The biggest business reaction to the cancer alert was not in the UK at all but in Amsterdam. There, shares in the Dutch company Nutreco Holding, owner of the Marine Harvest sahnon farming combine, nosedived, wiping 50m [pounds sterling] from the firm's value. Then there is the cost to the taxpayer. Local authorities, as well as Highlands and Islands Enterprise, subsidise these farms. Shetland Islands
Council has launched an investigation into how it lost 6m[pounds sterling] investing in and guaranteeing loans to a salmon farming venture which has gone bust. There may well be a case for subsidising enterprise in the remotest fringes of Britain, but there have to be cleaner and more job-productive industries than fish farming.
The end product doesn't even taste good. Often it's greasy, flabby, flavourless, gelatinous, orange gunk. So rise up, discard your lemon wedges, ditch the brown bread and butter, and join me in boycotting the stuff.
If you needed further proof that accounting is an inexact science, Shell has provided it in spades. The oil company has confessed that billion barrels of its oil reserves which it had previously insisted were easily get-at-able er, aren't. It didn't put it in those terms, though. Instead, there was much obfuscation and guff about a "non-recurring recategorisation" of proved hydrocarbon reserves. This was not a modest amendment: billion barrels would fuel the entire world for two months. The company was rightly spanked by share dealers, by credit rating agencies and by the financial media. The sin that rankled most, however, was that none of the directors delivered the bad news in person. The boss, Sir Philip Watts, absented himself from the entire affair. It was left to staff in the investor relations department to explain Shell's worst embarrassment since Brent Spar.
When you've lost your shareholders 3bn [pounds sterling] in a couple of hours, a bit of humility doesn't go amiss. Watts, who was paid [pounds sterling] last year, doesn't seem to understand that.
Patrick Husking is deputy City editor of the London Evening Standard
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