‘The Angling Trust has welcomed the commitment from the Environment Agency (EA) to deliver an ambitious 5-Point Approach to halt the dramatic decline of salmon stocks in England.

Despite funding cuts from government, the Agency has committed additional funding to support this extensive programme of work over an 18-month period.

The approach aims to address five key issues affecting salmon stocks:

1. improving marine survival, which has decreased by almost 50% in 20 years;
2. reducing the impact of both commercial and recreational fisheries and in particular phasing out mixed stock netting;
3. finding fish passage solutions to mitigate the impacts of man-made barriers to migration, improving river habitat and tackling predation from fish-eating birds;
4. safeguarding sufficient flows;
5. reducing agricultural pollution to improve water quality and maximise spawning success.

This move follows intense pressure by the Angling Trust on Ministers and Environment Agency officials through the ‘Save our Salmon’ campaign for immediate government action to save rapidly declining salmon populations. The Angling Trust was voted to head the campaign by readers of Trout and Salmon magazine in 2015. The most recently (2014) published assessments of salmon stocks in England and Wales by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) showed further declines from previous surveys to the lowest numbers on record.  With at least 900 full time jobs supported by recreational salmon angling and hundreds of millions of pounds worth of fishery rights dependent on fish stocks it is imperative that drastic action is taken now.

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