An Atlantic salmon symposium, bringing together experts from both sides of the Atlantic, began yesterday in Biarritz. Tomorrow, the House of Commons takes the report and third reading of the Salmon Bill.
We are concerned about threatened species. Atlantic salmon do not fall into that category - yet. This year and last, surprising numbers returned to British rivers. But what matters is the long-term trend. The world catch in home waters, excluding the new high-seas fisheries, has declined by a catastrophic 50 per cent in 17 years. If we do nothing, Atlantic salmon may become as scarce as red kites.
Does this matter? I think it does. The salmon is perhaps our most interesting and splendid fish, starting life in fresh water, swimming thousands of miles to feeding grounds off the Faroes, Greenland and Grand Banks, returning after one sea-winter as grilse, or after two, three or four as salmon weighing between six and 40 pounds or more. It would be tragic if our grandchildren found our rivers empty of salmon because of failure to act now.
The problem is international. Atlantic salmon comes from north-eastern North America and northern Europe. The North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (Nasco) has been established in Edinburgh to co-ordinate action. It includes the United States, which is tougher than other Western governments on whale and salmon problems. Its most urgent task is restricting the high-seas fisheries off Greenland and the Faroes, now taking a quarter of a million salmon each year and putting an enormous strain on the species.
We cannot, sadly, belong to Nasco; the EEC Commission is responsible for Community fisheries and represents us. But we must work through the EEC for effective conservation measures. So far it has been the Atlantic Salmon Trust, a private body, which has kept in touch with those concerned overseas. The government should now do more.
To exert our proper influence we must put our own house in order. The Canadians, Americans and Norwegians have introduced stringent conservation measures. We have not. But in June, John Selwyn Gummer said for the Ministry of Agriculture: "I do not see salmon as a food resource in the wild. It is only incidentally a food resource."
Salmon farming, already producing seven times the total Scottish catch of wild salmon, can now provide our food needs, while rod fishing brings benefits to poor rural areas far exceeding returns from commercial netting.
The Salmon Bill began as a mainly local Scottish measure. But intense discussion in both Houses has increased its value and demonstrated the depth of concern about threats to the species. It now includes clauses which should make the sale of illegally caught salmon more difficult, and a government undertaking to review, after three years, netting off north-eastern England and in south-eastern Scotland.
Some rivers have been cleaned up and a few salmon are again running up the Thames and Tyne. The Atlantic Salmon Conservation Trust is buying up netting rights in Scotland. This is all good news, but we cannot afford to relax. Salmon are now threatened by pollution, water abstraction, legal and illegal drift-netting at sea with monofilament nets, organized poaching in rivers, and hydro-electric dams.
A Severn barrage, if not built with the greatest care, could wipe out runs in the Severn and the Wye. Acid deposition is damaging upland Wales and Scotland. Massed conifers suck chemicals out of polluted air and the run-off - which has dangerous acid levels and releases toxic aluminium salts - kills life in streams. Welsh Water is doing important research on this for the Department of the Environment.
The fragmentation of responsibility between four ministries in the United Kingdom, most of them giving a low priority to salmon, makes it difficult to have an effective national policy.
And we need better information. Only a few rivers, such as the Spey and the Wye, are the subject of comprehensive annual statistics. Some think that only a national tagging scheme can give us reliable information on catches. We need an authoriative body to collect and publish detailed statistics and, on the basis of the best scientific advice and constant monitoring of the runs, work out a national management.
A welcome step towards this was the government's announcement in June that it would establish a standing advisory committee on salmon conservation for the whole of Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland), under an independent chairman.
This will initially consider the availability of information on the status of salmon stocks, the effects of predators, fishing at low-water levels and the effectiveness of the law against poaching. The government would earn the thanks of everyone interested in salmon if it would write this body into the Salmon Bill, making it statutory and permanent.
