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A prominent Ottawa biologist wants more of us to pick up a fishing rod and reconnect with nature as a way of protecting our lakes and rivers and the wildlife in them.

Steven Cooke of Carleton University says the latest survey from Fisheries and Oceans Canada shows a problem: Fishing is at risk of becoming an old man’s pastime.

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Released two weeks ago, the Survey of Recreational Fishing in Canada, 2015 shows that the sport fishing population “continues to age. So we are failing to recruit new anglers,” he said.

Fewer hooks in the water may sound like good news for fish, but Cooke says it is not.

“That is alarming to me in that it suggests that people are becoming disconnected with nature. In the future, the idea of fishing, and hunting presumably as well, will just be foreign to a lot of people because everybody will be living in cities and focused on technology, and not having access to the natural world,” he said.