Angling Trust

Fishing is one of the country’s largest participation sports and the benefits of angling have never been more widely recognised—the Angling Trust is the national governing body for the sport of angling in England as well as a leading environmental NGO, representing anglers and creating opportunities for all to experience fishing in a healthy aquatic world. The Angling Trust has established itself as a leading voice in the protection and enhancement of the aquatic environment—we work across saltwater and freshwater environments alongside other leading partner NGOs as well as Fish Legal, our sister organisation, in advocating greater environmental protection, lobbying for positive change, and influencing political and NGO stakeholders in developing policy. We are leading members of the End Sewage coalition and across the past 70+ years, anglers have done more to raise awareness of the mistreatment of our waterways and practically seek to improve habitats and ecosystems than almost any other stakeholder group. In the past 12 months, we have introduced nearly 40,000 children and families to angling for the first time and engaged a further 20,000 primary school children through our innovative Reel Education programme. As an organisation, we have over 2,500 club and fishery members representing over 600,000 individuals—our army of national volunteers carry out thousands of water quality tests, thousands of community coaching sessions, thousands of voluntary enforcement hours, and we are rapidly approaching a million pieces of litter cleared from our aquatic environment.