Our Policy Asks for England
Wild Atlantic salmon will have a thriving future if we choose to act now by giving them free access to cold, clean water and restoring their habitat.
1. Appropriate legislation which puts wild salmon first.
Integrate salmon conservation into broader biodiversity, climate, and environmental policies and targets and ensure regulations are effective and enforceable.
Ensure that the English Salmon and Sea Trout Action Plan (English Fisheries Group Salmon and Sea Trout Sub-group) is published as a matter of urgency and fully integrates with biodiversity, climate, flood and drought management, river basin management plans, catchment plans, and water resource management plans, with those plans containing corresponding policies, actions and targets to protect salmon and sea trout.
Ensure that salmon and sea trout are key indicator fish species of river health in policies to increase and measure species abundance as part of the legally binding Environment Act targets.
Ensure that improving salmon and sea trout protection and abundance is a key target in the revised Environmental Improvement Plan.
Ensure actions and measures contained in the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975 are fully implemented, with stronger financial deterrents and penalties commensurate with other wildlife crimes.
Ensure any legislation arising from the recommendations of the Water Commission is aligned with existing targets and plans and take an integrated approach to managing water that effectively protects and improves salmon populations and their habitats.
2. Make polluters pay.
Ensure that fines serve as a genuine deterrent to illegal activities, are strictly enforced and require polluters to cover the full cost of environmental harm.
Ensure the measures around liability and accountability as set out in the Water (Special Measures) Bill, including the regulators cost recovery powers, are fully implemented and expanded to other sectors.
Ensure strict enforcement of all relevant Environment Agency and Ofwat regulations across all sectors that impact the water environment.
Ensure all the fines and penalties arising from pollution incidents are reinvested, via the Water Restoration Fund, in salmon and sea trout habitat remediation and improvement where those habitats have been impacted by the incident.
3. Free access to cold, clean water.
Accelerate the removal of physical barriers to migration ensuring free-flowing rivers, natural processes and free access to habitat.
Ensure River Basin Management Plans include specific and time-bound measures that are backed up by adequate funding and governance, including specific measures for barrier removal and easements.
Increase guidance and resourcing in relation to barrier removal and easement to simplify and improve the speed, efficiency, accuracy, and standardisation of the process across the country.
4. Manage land for water.
Adopt a collaborative approach to water and land management to enable recovery of wild salmon and their habitat at catchment scale.
Ensure Catchment Based Approach and Catchment Partnerships are properly funded and given a stronger mandate to enable integrated water and land management to drive action to protect and improve salmon habitat.
Ensure farming support payments (ELMS and others) are targeted towards incentives and support to improve water quality, habitats, and reduce pollution impacts.
Introduce a mandatory risk assessment for all tillage and land disturbance activities at a field scale. The assessment should identify the risk of run off pathways into rivers and where appropriate install suitable mitigation measures.
Ensure planning and development policies and guidance, including Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), wastewater management, water efficiency and urban drainage, do not have a detrimental effect on salmon and sea trout habitats and migration.
5. Improve wild salmon survival at sea.
Protect all life stages of salmon through better understanding and minimising impacts on wild salmon in the marine environment.
Ensure that national and regional marine plans provide appropriate protection for juvenile and adult salmon and sea trout in their transition through estuaries and in coastal and economic zones secretary of state waters.
Ensure fisheries management plans and IFCA byelaws afford consistent, full and effective protect for salmon and sea trout from bycatch.
Ensure the facilitation of observer and eDNA data from a minimum of two per cent of all commercial fishing vessels of all types both offshore and near shore. This will enable a quantitative analysis of the risk of exposure to bycatch to stocks. In addition, access to detailed current gear- and fisheries-specific fishing effort data.
Ensure that knowledge gaps and environmental assessments, associated with the impacts of marine renewables on wild salmon and sea trout are urgently addressed by Government and developers.