River campaigner speaks on the ecological collapse of the River Wye

River campaigner, Feargal Sharkey, speaks on the ecological collapse of the River Wye outside Cardiff’s Civil Justice Centre.

Transcript

00:00 So what was that I can't hear you?

00:03 Please can you introduce yourself?

00:04 Oh my name is Fergal Sharkey.

00:06 I made a few records.

00:08 I go fishing and that's why I'm here.

00:12 I wanted to go fishing and I realised that I couldn't

00:15 because the river I was looking at was on the verge of dying.

00:19 That made me curious as to why it was dying.

00:23 That gave me an itch.

00:25 Foolishly, stupidly, naively I scratched that itch.

00:29 Four years later I've now realised that every time I scratch that itch

00:34 I just end up with a bigger itch.

00:36 And why are we here today?

00:38 Quite simply to call the whole system of regulation

00:42 and environmental protection and conservation into question.

00:46 We have laws in this country, some of them are really robust

00:50 and the River Wye is the perfect example.

00:53 It is one of, if not the most legally, heavily protected river

00:57 in the whole of Western Europe under international law

01:00 and yet it is dying a slow, agonising death.

01:04 And the very government agency set up to protect it, to enforce that law

01:09 in our opinion has been acting unlawfully by not enforcing

01:14 and bringing to bear the full weight of the law as is its job.

01:18 So we're asking the court to agree with that conclusion

01:22 and to order the agency to go and do the very thing it was set up to do

01:26 protect our rivers.