CONTRARY to the beliefs of non-participants, angling – and in particular fly fishing – is not about long periods of boredom interspersed with the odd burst of excitement over an actual catch. Casting a fly over a rising salmon is a time of deep concentration, finger clenching tension, and soaring hope.

And if you have crossed the Atlantic to fish for salmon in the Canadian wildness and, if your are like me, accustomed to the peace and quiet of a British riverbank, you can add another much more disturbing emotion: fear!

I once visited friends in Nova Scotia where I planned to spend a week or so salmon fishing. Before doing so, I was warned what to do if I happened to share a promising stretch of fast flowing water with a fisherman much better - and bigger - than me: a brown bear.

To bears, desperate to put on fat to carry them through their long winter hibernation, a good autumn catch of salmon is a matter of life or death. And although brown bears are not normally prone to attacking humans, unlike their bigger grizzly cousins, they can get a little cross with people who rob them of their supper. You are advised not to run away, but to face them and, very slowly, withdraw, walking backwards if possible, as if leaving the chamber of a medieval king.

As it happens, I never had to make use of this advice because, the day we arrived on Canadian soil, the Nova Scotia forests were closed down for fear of fire because of a summer long draught. My son and I ended up fishing for mackerel in the sea, something we could have done from Brid.

But the memories of this came flooding back a few days ago when it was revealed that the owner of a 75,000 acre estate in the Lake District – only 30 miles of so from the northern tips of the Yorkshire Dales National Park - was considering the latest in-trend for ultra-conservationists, re-wilding.

If you have not heard the word before, I can guarantee that you will hear a lot of it in the future because it means letting large areas of Britain go back to nature – nature as it was many hundreds of years ago when wolves, wild boar and lynx roamed the land. In central Europe, they are even re-introducing wild bears, much to the chagrin of local farmers, for bears can and will kill cattle as well as sheep and goats.

It is already happening here in parts of Scotland, where a rich laird is planning to release wolves to cull burgeoning numbers of red deer which can do enormous damager to forestry businesses a well as devour large areas of grazing. Now I can't guarantee this, but if I were a red deer I think I would prefer to be culled by a bullet from an expert marksman – the present practice – than be hunted down by a snarling pack of wolves.

They have also re-introduced beaver in some parts of Scotland, much to the dismay of riparian rights owners, for beavers by nature build dams which, in the shallow upper reaches of famous salmon rivers, block the entry of fish to the breeding grounds: salmon spawn needs fresh, fast-flowing water to hatch and thrive.

I am obviously biased here, and I admit it, but the salmon is already a threatened species in Britain so to place it in further jeopardy for what is, I believe, merely a rich man’s whim is taking conservation a step too far. As far as I know, no-one as yet wants to re-introduce wild bear to our salmon rivers...

However, there is a pretty ominous side to Jim Lowther’s plan to re-wild that huge Lake District estate, according to a report in the Sunday Times. Lowther, whose elder brother the Earl of Lonsdale has just put one of the Lake District’s most famous mountains, Blencathra, up for sale, is said to consider sheep grazing pastures as “environmentally sterile.”

And he said to be considering refusing to sign CAP subsidy payment documents for his tenant farmers unless they stop grazing some of their sheep to allow the landscape to return to its natural state of scrub, heather and peat – exactly the opposite to what has happened here in the Dales where our famous landscape, beloved of tourists and the many businesses which rely on them, has been created by our farmers.

Without those subsidies, some of the Lakes farmers would go bust, says the Sunday Times. So far, I am unaware of large-scale re-wilding plans here on the Dales although the re-introduction of birds of prey like hen harriers and red kites has not gone down well with some – but by no means all – game keepers.

But, pretty, pretty, please, estate owners don’t make me have to keep looking over my shoulder when casting a fly on the Aire, the Ribble, the Ure or the Wharfe. I am too old to be escaping from a pack of wolves - or a bear, even walking backwards.