World Rivers Day: What Wild Atlantic Salmon are Telling us About the State of our Rivers and Oceans
In light of World Rivers Day (25th September 2022), The Missing Salmon Alliance are urging people to recognise what and how wild Atlantic salmon, a species in crisis, are telling us about the state of our rivers and oceans.
With the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, iconic wild Atlantic salmon are on a path to extinction. Atlantic salmon stocks have plummeted by 80% in 25 years, and if the current trend continues, wild salmon will be extinct in many areas of the world within the next 30 years.
As a migratory species that traverses many regions and habitats including freshwater and marine, salmon are a key indicator species. Salmon represent the global health of our rivers, oceans and ultimately our relationship with the natural world that sustains all human activity.
In order to survive and thrive in our rivers and oceans, salmon need access to cold, clean water. However, this access is limited. The work of the Missing Salmon Alliance is highlighting this and the multiple impediments they face throughout their migration.
Atlantic salmon undergo a fascinating migratory life-cycle - an odyssey filled with numerous challenges. They begin their lives in freshwater and after 1-3 years, the young fish travel to sea to feed and grow before returning to their natal spawning grounds. We see losses throughout their journey, some of which are manageable and some of which are not. The Missing Salmon Alliance aims to provide solutions to better protect them.
As salmon head downstream, they encounter pollution, parasites, and predation. If they survive these initial challenges, the salmon travel onto the smolt highway up to Norway to feed in the Voring Plateau over the summer months. Once they have fed there, the fish either attempt to return to their native rivers as grilse, or they go further afield, as far as the west coast of Greenland. All the while, they must avoid predation, netting, overfishing, aquaculture impacts, pollution, and a warming climate.
On their return to their native freshwater environments, they struggle against poor water quality, low water quantity, warming water and more as they make their way back through the estuary. They may finally get within a few miles of their natal spawning grounds after their long journey only to reach a manmade dam, meaning they cannot get home and therefore cannot fulfil their natural life cycle.
If there's a canary in a coal mine it would be hard to argue that it isn't wild Atlantic salmon. The Missing Salmon Alliance urges people to overcome apathy for the benefit of salmon as this species sits at the core of a much wider biodiversity. What impacts salmon, impacts the food chain, and impacts us.
Mark Bilsby, CEO Atlantic Salmon Trust, Missing Salmon Alliance member, said “This remarkable species faces a host of problems wherever they go and they need our help to safeguard their future. They inform us of the wider issues and we need to listen to them before it’s too late. We cannot imagine a world without wild Atlantic salmon in our rivers and that is why we need to do all that we can to take action.”
Penelope Gane, Head of Practice at Fish Legal, said: “We are fighting cases throughout the UK at the moment where the risk to salmon survival is very real. Whether it is illegal barriers to migration, pollution from intensive food production, raw sewage discharges or over-abstraction at a time when river levels are already dangerously low, salmon survival needs to be front and centre when it comes to decision making that affects their habitat. It is imperative that regulators in particular wake up to the fact that a lack of meaningful action on their part could see this iconic species disappear within our lifetime.”
As an Alliance of six 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