Just recieved this email from a local fishing guide and have asked their permission to put it on here.I cant comment on how accurate it is so....dont shoot the messanger.


Hi everyone
can i ask you a great favour, we have heard that the Generallitat of
Catalunya has EU backing to cull catfish and carp from the whole
lenght of the lower ebro right upto the border with spain in the
province of Aragon this is being done because they are not native
species to the ebro river, the carp were introduced approx 2000 years
ago by the Romans and the catfish in 1973 by Germans, the Generallitat
have just run a pilot scheme on the lower ebro where 73 catfish were
caught or speargunned by Romanians that are employed by the
generallitat to carry out the cull, they are now going to start
netting the river useing large cone nets and all catfish and carp
caught will be frozen and sent to Romania for food as part payment for
the cull, many people i have spoken to think this is an ill conceived
plan with many flaws which i will list below.
1 who will police the Romanians to see that they are not taking fish
that are native to the river.
2 fish that are caught in the nets that are native to the river will
probably suffer injury by having their heads/gills caught in the nets
or be crushed by larger fish.
3 what will happen when someone is injured or dies as a result of
running a boat into one of these nets which someone nearly did at the
3k mark a few weeks ago where she ended up cutting a strong cord
holding a net this was done to stop a serious accident happening with
another boat in low light conditions.
4 if the catfish are culled in large numbers this will result
eventually in a huge drop in fishermen coming to Catalunia that will
instead go into Spain where they are not affected by this  proposed
large scale cull this will result in a dramatice drop in fishing
licence revenue and also tourism.
5 there have been no proposals put forward by the generallitat as to
what plans they have to re-populate the river with native species
which would take years and years to end up with a river that is
prolific as it is now and would fishermen come back to the river
probably no as the main target species fo anglers from the UK is the
catfish and then carp.

Can i ask you all to send an email to the following wesite of the
generallitat of catalunya which is  gencat.cat/index_eng.htm then go
into contact at top of the page then into contact us then go into the
drop down menu to subject agriculture. cattle raising, fishing and
then type in your disapproval listing some of your complaints if
enough people complain perhaps they may take notice if you can forward
this email to your friends who will also complain this will help
enormously
kindest regards