World Rivers Day, Missing Salmon Alliance: Working Globally to save Salmon
September is proving to be a big month for Britain’s waterways, and for rivers worldwide. The 21st Century’s refocus onto nature, the environment, and the growing threats to our local ecologies has meant that rivers have become a greater part of the conversation about the world around us. With World Rivers Day scheduled towards end of this month, and ongoing collaboration with a cohort of like-minded organisations across the globe, there’s a great opportunity to lift the ongoing plight of Atlantic Salmon into the environmental conversation. We’re excited to see how September raises public awareness about what’s going on beneath the surfaces of our quiet creaks and roaring rivers.
On the Fourth Sunday of this September over one hundred countries across the globe will be taking the time to celebrate World Rivers Day and raise awareness for their waterways. This yearly event was proposed by the founder of the four-decade running British Columbia Rivers Day, Mark Angelo, in response to the 2005 UN Water for Life Decade initiative. Since 2005, World Rivers Day has sparked events cities ranging from Chicago, Illinois, to Brisbane, Australia.
At its heart, then, World Rivers Day is a globalised effort to turn the eyes of the public onto their water sources, and it’s exactly this that we at the Missing Salmon Alliance have been doing since our formation in 2019. Our goal, to halt the alarming decline of Atlantic Salmon Populations in rivers across the United Kingdom, has brought together the expertise, coordinating activities and management solutions of our five member organisations; the Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, the Angling Trust, Fisheries Management Scotland and the Rivers Trust.
However, with wild Atlantic Salmon’s population trends pointing to extinction in a quarter decade, our newly formed partnership with Smithsonian has derived even greater importance. Over the last few months, our two organisations have come together as part of a new initiative that will draw the eyes of the public, just like World Rivers Day, to their local waterways via art and multi-media initiatives.
One fundamental aspect to this internationalised approach to conservation, and tackling environmental issues, comes from the Smithsonian’s Citizen Science scheme. Its focus on putting the task of studying the world around us in the hands of local communities has been an exciting aspect of our work with Willie Yeomans and the Clyde River Foundation. Their drive to engage 26 primary schools along the Clyde river will see children getting their hands on local riverine wildlife, collecting eDNA samples, and compiling their findings with different Citizen-Science projects across the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards.
As such, September shows us what cooperation can achieve on a global level when we want to move the spotlight of conversation. World Rivers Day continues an ongoing movement of cherishing the world’s freshwater sources whilst our work with the Smithsonian ensures that raising awareness does not stop at turning heads, but also makes a marked difference to a cause we, and all the organisations work with, care so deeply about.
As an Alliance of five organisations, we will build on the existing work of our partners and maximise our impact by taking a coordinated approach and vital action in order to halt and reverse the decline of wild Atlantic salmon.
The goal of the Missing Salmon Alliance is to build an evidence-base to influence national and international decision-makers to regulate activities that adversely impact wild Atlantic salmon.
The Missing Salmon Alliance
The MSA is comprised of the following members:
Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Angling Trust with Fish Legal, The Rivers Trust and Fisheries Management Scotland.
https://www.missingsalmonalliance.org