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One of the local river keepers is taking issue with the Queen’s diet: she’s not eating enough swan and, unchecked by natural predators, the mute swan population is booming. So, you might ask, what’s the problem? The charge laid at the swans beaks boils down to diet: by grazing on weed, the swans are uprooting valuable insect habitat and reducing the invertebrate populations on the chalk streams.
This, in turn, affects the amount of available fish food, reducing the size of populations sustained on a given stretch and the size of individual fish. Which upsets fisherman and keeper alike. Add to that the swans habit of joining sheep in field to graze, and the farmers aren’t all the keen on the population explosion either.
Over-grazing of weed is less of an issue in years like this one with plenty of water, but in a dry year it can be devastating. Weed works as a semi-permeable dam, helping to maintain water levels. Strategic weed cutting can make or break fishing on a beat. It comes down to conservation or preservation and species priorities when managing a population.
But how do you manage a protected species with a population that is getting out of control? Unique to this protected species is the Queen’s right of consumption: Her Majesty remains the sole legal predator. So the ‘keeper hopes Her Majesty will be serving swan to all her guests this summer.
