Helen Mark visits Witton Park in County Durham where Get Hooked on Fishing, a scheme that promotes fishing to help reduce crime and anti-social behaviour amongst children, originated. She meets some of the children about to start on the scheme, the kids that are going to teach them, and learns about conservation and regeneration in an area that was once gravel tips and dumping grounds.

Get Hooked on Fishing was the idea of Mick Watson and Phil Farley, fishing partners from County Durham. Mick is a police officer who has taken a career break in order to organise and develop the scheme, which enables kids who wouldn’t normally mix or get to meet each other to have a chance to learn about different backgrounds, upbringings and opinions. It's an amazingly successful project, nearly 100 per cent of the kids continue to fish and be involved with the scheme, with many going on to gain NVQs in angling coaching.

Helen moves downstream to the Low Barns Nature Reserve, an SSSI just up-stream from the Witton Park lakes. It used to be a gravel extraction site and is now a 50-hectare wetland site with woodland and grassland. A major project is the development of a reed bed. David Long, reservoir, wetlands and biodiversity officer for Durham Wildlife Trust, is in charge of the project and explains how they hope that it will attract the bittern, one of Britain's rarest and most treasured birds.

Get Hooked on Fishing
Low Barns Nature Reserve

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