Mr. X said:
A few small, carefully selected areas set aside might well make sense. Hopefully they would produce an abundance of wildlife that would overspill into surrounding area that could be fished.
The problem with governments in general (and, perhaps, this one in particular), is that once you give them an inch, they take a mile. I wonder if the American NRA have the right approach, which seems to be to give no quarter.
This is a dilemma for me, I am for protecting fish stocks & the (hunting) environment they require to live, but I am also for protecting what few rights we have left, including hunting & fishing rights & access, for future generations. Unlike some, I see hunting as being completely compatible with conservation. The area I live in has numerous woods, hedge rows, spinneys, ponds, marshes and coppice maintained exclusively, primarily or secondarily for hunting and/or fishing of various types. Many farmers no longer hunt, so they rip out the hedge rows & woods and drain the marshes, so that they have larger more cost-effective fields. It is the hunters that are preserving & managing the habitat of the wildlife, often at considerable financial costs to themselves.