This month marks the end of my five-year term as president of the Wild Trout Trust (WTT) — a charity set up in 1997 to conserve an iconic fish species under threat. This piece is an unashamed plug for that small and vibrant body — and an appeal to the self-interest, if I cannot reach the consciences, of angling’s tight-fisted millions.

In its short life, the WTT has become one of the most effective bodies working not only for trout, but for the rivers in which they swim. In that work, the WTT is also benefiting the wider environment — healthy rivers cannot spring from unhealthy landscapes.

Wild trout are under pressure on three fronts. The first is pollution, mostly, in recent times, the sinister, invisible pollution of herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers used on land to produce cheap, bug-free crops. The second is abstraction, which sucks water from rivers, lakes and aquifers to slake the ever-growing thirst of factories and homes. The third threat stems from long-term neglect of the fish’s river habitats — of the river bed and banks that give trout the food, spawning sites and shelter on which they depend for survival. Pollution and abstraction are long-term problems requiring long-haul solutions. Thankfully, several bodies are pursuing them.

Trout habitat, however, is amenable to short-term actions that will ease access to spawning areas, remove the silts that clog them, encourage plant life, increase insect populations and provide the fish with refuge when dangers threaten.

It is this last area on which the WTT concentrates, with spectacular success. It offers an opportunity for volunteers, under the guidance of the trust’s professionals, to pull on their wellies and get stuck in. Habitat projects can produce visible results, usually within months.

For some years, the WTT’s consultants have been carrying out between 40 and 50 habitat surveys a year in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. About 90 per cent of these have resulted in volunteer projects that have improved the prospects not only for salmo trutta, but for a host of other fish, plants, bugs and small mammals that live in and around freshwater.

They have meant that about 100 kilometres of river a year have been improved — a figure that is set to rise to 150 kilometres within two years.

These astonishing volunteer results have encouraged the Environment Agency, Natural England, the National Trust and other bodies to contribute to the trust’s work. A few months ago, the admirable Esmee Fairbairn Foundation contributed £75,000 to enable the WTT to launch one of its most exciting initiatives — a programme that will involve local communities in the resurrection of long-neglected streams in towns and cities.

And the rub? Most anglers could not give a monkey’s about any of it.

Now, the WTT is a conservation body, not an angling body, but anglers, many of whom will end up fishing for the wild trout that have been saved, are the ultimate beneficiaries of its work. In the five years I have been president, membership of the WTT has grown from about 1,500 to about 2,500 — a substantial percentage shift, but in spite of all efforts, a pathetic increase in absolute numbers.

No one knows exactly how many people fish for trout in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but it is well in excess of half a million. In other words, only one angler in more than 200 is willing to put his money where he aims his fly.

The same pathetic level of support has long been experienced by the mainstream angling bodies. The Salmon and Trout Association, a lobby group in existence for more than 100 years, has only 13,000 individual members. The pollution-fighting Anglers’ Conservation Association (ACA), around for 60 years, has only 7,000 individual members.

It seems certain that the same apathy will be encountered when the Angling Trust, the new, unified angling body to be headed by the ACA’s present director, Mark Lloyd, comes into being on January 5. The target the group has set itself — 100,000 individual members within three years — is likely to take far longer to achieve, if at all.

The same eyes-down, foot-dragging response comes from the tackle trade which, no less than its customers, benefits from the work of the WTT and the rest. A tiny handful of manufacturers supports the trust’s conservation work and yet manufacturers and suppliers aplenty support competitive fishing, an activity that is positively injurious to the sport’s long-term image.

To add to it all, most charities, the trust among them, face an economic slow-down and the cutback of corporate funding that could result. The WTT, soundly based and wisely managed, will steer a course through, but it is unlikely to be easy.

Over the next couple of years, a greater burden will fall on the members of this charity and on the mundane yet vital activities — talks and dinners, raffles and auctions — that keep volunteers involved and finances in the black. Meanwhile, subsidised by this dedicated minority, anglers at large will continue to spend huge sums on fishing without a second thought.

The fact that such criticisms can be made is deeply depressing. Angling is a billion-pound-plus a year activity. For a couple of pounds a year apiece its disciples could, over time, already have transformed the future not only for their quarry, but for their sport. Yet always they have looked away. It is time they lifted their eyes and started paying their rightful dues.

- Brian Clarke’s fishing column appears on the first Monday of each month.

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