Bute’s STIFF campaigners see Animal Concern enter the fight again Inchmarnock fish farm

Bute’s resourceful campaign group, Stop The Inchmarnock Fish Farm (or STIFF) has now seen the Animal Concern charity come into play in its bid to stop the award of a licence for a planned fish farm off the small island’s on Bute’s west coast.

This latest sally declares that if the fish farm gets the go ahead and is estabished, seals in a colony off Bute’s west coast could become extinct within one year. The timescale advanced does seem a little extravagant – before you become aware that they’re talking about human intervention and not disease.

Animal Concern says that the site of the proposed farm is around five hundred metres from a known seal haul-out site. Its Campaigns Consultant, John Robins, says in his submission to the inquiry that between 30 and 60 seals were shot in three days at a salmon farm near Lismore. This was sited within a similar distance from another known haul-out site. This then led to the installation of permanent acoustic ‘seal scaring’ devices in Lismore waters.

Mr Robins pointed out that: ‘Our concern is for the welfare of individual seals, but the conservation of the species is also a factor here. In some parts of Scotland common seal populations have fallen by more than 50 per cent in the last three years’.

STIFF’s Christine McArthur, highlighting the value of the seal colony to the wildlife tourism industry on Bute says: ‘It seems a shame that money is being spent to enhance the seal viewing area by the Discover Bute Landscape Partnership when the very presence of the seals is threatened by the fish farm’.

The enquiry continues.

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