| Species | Atlantic salmon - Salmo salar, fish |
| Habitat | COASTAL FLOOD AND GRAZING MARSH, RIVERS AND STREAMS |
| Background and status | The southwests salmon rivers contain a significant part of the UK's salmon habitat. Our salmon population has undergone a substantial decline since the 1960s and, although subject to fluctuations, population levels seem to have been low for the last two or three decades. Analysis of numbers of adult fish entering our rivers across the country in the spring migration period (1st Jan-31 March) have shown a marked decline over the period 1956-1994. The River Exe catchment for example shows average rod catches for these spring fish down to as little as 9% of historical levels, |
| Main Threats | Water quality and quantity, physical barriers in rivers which disrupt migration, overfishing of declining populations, siltation within rivers (from adjacent land) which reduces the quality of river gravels, an important habitat feature for salmon, poor management of river vegetation and invasion by alien species, competition with escaped rainbow trout from fish farms, and some concerns over fish disease (fungoids) |
| Conservation and targets | A Strategy for the
Management of Salmon in England and Wales produced
by the Environment Agency in 1996 sets out four objectives for salmon conservation
:
Current efforts across the region include efforts to get sea fisheries elsewhere shut or managed sensitively, fishery regulations to limit rod and net catches on specific rivers, voluntary measures to do the same thing, habitat improvement on rivers (eg buffer zones, gravel rehabilitation for breeding habitat), research into fish-eating birds, and other research and devlopment. |