Bid to bring fish of kings back from brink in River Severn

ONE of Britain’s rarest fish is to be brought back from extinction in West Midlands water.

It is hoped the twaite shad – a 13th century favourite with King Henry III – will soon swim again in the River Severn following a multi-million pound project spearheaded by the Severn Rivers Trust, the Environment Agency and Canal & River Trust.

It has been centuries since the twaite shad was hooked by anglers in our patch. But now experts are to create “fish passageways” to allow the few remaining shoals access to the river’s Shropshire stretches.

The Unlocking The Severn project, backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund and EU Life, follows a 2017 search for twaite shard in the Severn.

There were once millions of the small, silver species. Now, experts have found just 15,000 – and they are prevented from making it past Tewkesbury because of a weir.

As well as counting the elusive creatures using cameras and “acous- tic beams”, the monitoring team made the first known underwater film of shad on the Severn as they migrated upstream.

Acoustic tracking shad showed how tags fixed to 25 they migrate up the river, what habitats they use, and how barriers delay them.

This is all crucial information in understanding how to create the best access routes for the fish.

They will now create a number of passageways at weirs to allow the tiny population to enter 155 miles of the Severn north of Worcester.

Charles Crundwell, Environment Agency fisheries monitoring specialist, said: “We had no idea how many shad we’d find. We thought maybe a few thousand but, in fact, results suggest we could have as many as 15,000 in the lower reaches of the river.

“This shows great promise that by unlocking the river there’s scope for a really thriving population. Plus the work to help the shad will open up the river for all fish species, so help- ing the shad will help everything else for the benefit of wildlife, residents, tourists and anglers.

The shad – similar to a herring in appearance – spends most of its life in the sea, but migrates into fresh water to spawn.

Populations have been decimated by pollution and over-fishing. During last year’s survey, the monitoring also recorded the even rarer allis shad.

“Historically, the allis shad were even more prized as a food fish,” says Charles. “This is the first photographic proof that a tiny run of these fish still hold on in the Severn, which is really exciting and means that the natural restoration of this species is also likely to occur if we are able to provide fish passage solutions at the weirs further up the river.”