As you may be aware on Friday 6 February the Scottish Government published a consultation document on a proposed ban on the killing of salmon except under licence. Your Committee were firmly of the opinion that many of the proposals contained within this particular consultation were a direct threat to the future well being of not just our Association but to many others across Scotland.
In response to this development the Committee drew up a questionnaire which addressed the various proposals as well as considering a number of specific issues which were pertinent to the possible direction our Association might wish to move in the future.
In the last few weeks over 100 responses have been received and the results to date have been highly supportive of the position taken by your Committee. However, the Committee would like to hear from more of you and we would strongly encourage any member who has yet to complete their on line survey form or who is still sitting with a hard copy survey form to complete it and return it to us before 21 April to enable a final response to be made to the Scottish Government. One point we would like to clarify at this stage in response to a number of queries is that in question 7 the reference to “multi hook lures which utilise 3 hooks or more” refers to 3 separate hooks be they single, doubles or trebles.
Finally, as well as responding to your Association we would encourage all members to consider making their own individual response to the Scottish Government in order to confirm the strength of feeling that this proposal has generated. Full details on how to make an independent response are available at the following Scottish government web page:
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/02/4158/downloads
The Committee