An alliance to save salmon
What must be done to halt the alarming decline in our wild salmon? Five leading conservation bodies are pooling their knowledge to find the answers, as Mark Bilsby explains
IT is a human condition to hark back to halcyon days when catches of salmon were bountiful, whether that was in the 1960s, ’70s or even the Noughties. The issue is that salmon are like the weather, you get good years and bad years. To get an overview of what is actually happening you need to step back from the riverbank and look at the Atlantic. The clear view from around the north Atlantic, wherever salmon roam, is that from the mid-1980s – when figures were first collected from all countries – there were between eight and 10 million salmon at sea; today, that figure is between two and three million, with no indication that the decline is slowing.
So do we give up? The answer must surely be a resounding no. Instead, we need to listen to the message that the salmon are telling us: there is something wrong with our rivers and seas, otherwise this iconic fish would be thriving.
If The Field surveyed its readers to find out what they thought was causing the decline in salmon, the range of answers would be staggering. The key is that there is not just one problem but rather a host of pressures combining to cause this relentless decline in wild salmon stocks. We need to pick these problems apart, find out which ones are truly causing the issue and focus on managing the ones we can.
This is a big job and not one that the Atlantic Salmon Trust can tackle single-handedly – hence the formation of the Missing Salmon Alliance in late 2019, bringing together five leading salmon conservation organisations from across the British Isles. This alliance is not another organisation but rather the combined strength of will, technical know-how, advocacy and practical solutions of salmon management from five like-minded organisations, with the clear aim to find out why salmon are struggling so much and the steps needed to improve conditions for them.
At the centre of the alliance is the ‘Likely Suspects Framework’, which is a way of collecting information on the lifecycle of salmon, working out where and why they are dying so that the causes can be prioritised and, where possible, pragmatic management solutions put in place. This type of approach is not new and has been used with great success, notably in starting the process of turning around the viability of cod stocks in the Irish Sea.
Thankfully, over the years there has been a wealth of research done on the problems that salmon face, and the Likely Suspects Framework’s role is to bring that knowledge from around the Atlantic into one place. This will allow us to understand and act upon it. A practical example of this is that we know that the better-quality wild smolts produced in a river have two to three times the survival rate at sea – we need to understand why and then how we can get the catchments to produce these fitter young salmon.
The alliance’s work on tracking fish, whether on the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland, SAMARCH [Salmonid Management Around the Channel] in the English Channel or the West Coast Salmon Tracking Project across the western coastline of Scotland, all support the framework and are looking to fill gaps in our knowledge. This is with the express aim of understanding how better to look after our remaining stocks of salmon.
Science can only take us so far and common sense has also to be employed. And this probably highlights one of the greatest threats to salmon on the planet: APATHY. Unfortunately, we live in a world where most people now view salmon as a 200g fillet on the shelves of a supermarket, instead of a bar of silver journeying the lengths of rivers and across oceans. We need to overcome that apathy so that we can make real progress.
So, what does progress mean? For the Alliance, it is ensuring that we produce the fittest salmon through managing our rivers and ensuring that we do all we can to protect them as they venture along our coastlines and out to sea.
The Missing Salmon Alliance is looking to raise the profile of salmon at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow this autumn. Through working with like-minded partners from the Pacific Ocean we will install ‘Salmon School COP26’ – a fabulous piece of art and community engagement by Joseph Rossano – to highlight not just the conservation value of wild salmon but also their deep cultural connection with humanity over the ages and their economic contribution to our society. More than that it will be a call to arms, to not let salmon fade away but give them the space, time and resilience to thrive in the changing world.
So whilst it is easy to be gloomy about salmon I am much more optimistic about their future. That optimism derives from the knowledge that the future of this species, and so many more reliant on salmon, really is in all our hands if we want to make a difference.
It is not one problem but a host of pressures combining to cause this relentless decline