As a committed environmentalist, I read with dismay the report on bait digging in the Adur valley (March 27).

As someone who has gathered bait from this area for more than 30 years, I was astonished the Environment Agency seems to think an angler out to dig a handful of worms for an afternoon's fishing presents a serious threat to the stability of the vast acres of river bank.

Can the agency name a single occurrence anywhere when damage caused by diggers has ever caused a bank to collapse, leading to serious flooding?

I have a very long memory. When I started digging bait, the banks were under the jurisdiction of the Sussex River Authority.

Long before the Environment Agency took over the management of rivers, there were notices in the same places they are today.

However, the wording went something like this: "Bait digging is permitted at low tide from the flat foreshore."

I am sure many other people will remember these signs.

I have always dug bait at the very lowest points possible to dig, often in the water.

By backfilling the holes, you would be very hard pressed to see I had been there at all. There are as many worms there now as there ever were and the only time the digging has deteriorated is when the water has been polluted, which certainly is a matter for the Environment Agency.

There are also fewer people sea fishing today than there were before, owing to the lack of decent sea fish worth catching - a testament to the failure of the common fisheries policy and Maff.

The whole Adur valley, from Steyning to the sea, is and always will be a natural floodplain. With rising sea levels caused by global warming, it is inevitable at some time this valley will be flooded.

Anyone who has walked along the river bank at high tide on a spring tide will know how close the water comes to the top of the banks.

The Ouse at Lewes has flooded because of massive amounts of rain. Chichester also has been flooded for the same reason.

That, combined with the building of housing on flood plains - short-sighted planning but far-reaching devastation - is what the Environment Agency should be aiming its sights on, not the activities of a bloke with his fork and bucket.

-K J Foster, Kingsway, Hove