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Saving our Streams
The Role of the Anglers' Conservation Association
in Protecting English & Welsh Rivers

By Roger Bate
Foreword by Keith Hartley
December 2001
Institute of Economic Affairs
ISBN: 0-255-36494-6
125 pages, illustrated
$24.50 paper original

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In Saving Our Streams, Roger Bate explains the history of an unusual and remarkably effective 'environmental' organisation - the Anglers' Conservation Association (ACA). Founded in 1948, the ACA is a voluntary association of angling clubs and individual anglers which brings civil suits against polluters who harm fishing.

Dr. Bate's original and instructive history explores how the ACA, using the common law, has operated to indemnify its members against the cost of litigation, bringing thousands of actions and being awarded hundreds of injunctions and millions of pounds in damages for plaintiffs. Most cases end in out-of-court settlement which, though efficient, beings little public recognition to the ACA.

The ACA has not sought the limelight, unlike other environmental groups, but, argues Dr. Bate, it is the most efficient and determind pollution prevention body in Britain. Its success demonstrates the value of private initiatives against polluters.

Environmentalism; Politics
Research Monograph No. 53