New regulation

Fishing has arrived in the digital age

In future, the 95,000 fishing license holders in Upper Austria will have a better overview of the fishing grounds in the state.

The first fishing rights were granted in Austria during the imperial era. Since then, they have grown according to spatial and social conditions. Today, there are around 95,000 fishing license holders in Upper Austria, around 35,500 of whom actively fish.

Provincial Councillor Michaela Langer-Weninger had fishing digitized.(Bild: Kerschbaummayr Werner)

"Territories are no longer up to date"
"The historically developed fishing grounds used to make sense, but no longer meet current requirements," says Provincial Councillor for Agriculture Michaela Langer-Weninger (ÖVP). Instead, natural criteria and legal requirements must be taken into account today - and she has done this together with the state fishing association: a new fishing regulation comes into force on August 1st, which divides the entire state into 38 fishing districts without any gaps.

Information at the click of a mouse
The highlight: thanks to the digital storage in DORIS (Digital Upper Austrian Spatial Information System), fishermen and other interested parties can "find out which fishing district they are currently in at the click of a mouse", explains Langer-Weninger. In particular, the catchment areas of the water bodies now serve to delineate the individual fishing grounds. "This means that fishing waters that will only be created in the future can also be assigned to a fishing district based on their location in a catchment area," emphasizes the Provincial Councillor.