Dear Editor,
Regarding your article on the decline of the wild Atlantic Salmon on the 15 October.
As someone who has worked to research and conserve wild Atlantic salmon for over 30 years, I am enraged, that both national and international governments have allowed our rivers to deteriorate into such a sad state.
Rivers which once had runs of wild salmon into the tens of thousands in the 1980’s are now reduced to hundreds with an estimated decline of some 80% over the last 40 years. Salmon have become classified as at risk on almost all rivers in England and Wales and listed as endangered on the IUCN red list.
Our rivers are treated as sewers by the water companies and certain agriculture sectors and climate change is warming our rivers and seas which is having a detrimental impact and particularly their survival at sea, but so much can be done, yet isn’t.
Wild salmon are the canary of our rivers, they require cold, clean water in which they breed and grow before migrating to sea. They require safe passage on their 2000-mile journey to feed and grow in the north Atlantic, before returning to their natal river to spawn.
If we are to save wild salmon, we need to work with NGO’s like those in the Missing Salmon Alliance to reverse declines by:
- Delivering true catchment scale restoration for salmon, enabling government to hit biodiversity targets.
- Arming the regulators with the proper resources to regulate water and agriculture sectors.
- Speed up infrastructure investment to improve water management and reduce sewage discharges.
- Properly compensate farmers to deliver nature-based solutions.
- Implement all the recommendations of the current regulatory framework for salmon farming review.
- Recognise wild salmon as a marine fish making it a regulatory requirement that salmon are included in bycatch monitoring in commercial fisheries.
Otherwise, wild salmon may disappear from our rivers for ever!
Dylan Roberts
Head of Fisheries Research
GWCT
Support our vital Salmon research today
We need your support to continue our crucial work to make a difference for salmon. Without the additional data more equipment will provide we cannot fully understand the problems they face and how to solve them.