Filthy lucre cleans rivers
Against a tide of gloom, the salmon makes a comeback-Comment-Columnists-Magnus Linklater-TimesOnline
A cri de coeur from the Salmon at Sea project, published this week, claims that a combination of climate change and illegal trawling has reduced this most glamorous of game fish to a shadow of its former self, and that unless steps are taken to save it, not only will a famous species face extinction, but the multimillion pound angling industry will also be placed at risk.
As with all conservation-disaster stories, there is an element of hype in all this — behind every anguished call for help lies a research project seeking funds. But the story of the salmon and its apparent decline tells us a great deal about the state of our conservation industry and contains a paradox that it would be wrong to ignore. The fact is that, far from facing extinction, the salmon has made a remarkable comeback — in some rivers at least.....
Reports coming in this spring are optimistic about the prospects for 2007. The figures may not quite match the miraculous catches that were sometimes recorded 50 years ago, but they are very far from the disaster that was once predicted for the Atlantic salmon — and fly in the face of those who predicted that farmed salmon would rapidly wipe out the wild variety.
The improvements have been brought about entirely by man, not nature. Huge amounts of money have been invested in buying out offshore commercial fisheries that were catching salmon returning from their feeding grounds at sea, thus preventing them breeding in freshwater rivers. Drift nets have been banned, river mouths are no longer netted as they once were, millions of pounds have been invested in cleaning river water, repairing banks and fencing them off from cattle and sheep. Further afield, the extraordinary efforts of one man, Orri Vigfússon, chairman of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF), have succeeded in mobilising international opinion and raising millions of dollars to buy out commercial fishing around the coasts of Iceland, Norway and Greenland, thus protecting the feeding grounds and migration routes of wild salmon and ensuring that they return to the rivers from which they first set out.
This has meant persuading commercial fishermen to hold back from putting to sea, paying Danish trawlermen to stop fishing for sand eels, and pointing out the impact on the food-chain of overfishing in sensitive parts of the North Sea. Vigfússon’s campaign to save the salmon is by no means ended, but it has achieved remarkable results. Speaking from his headquarters in Reykjavik, he says: “The future of the Atlantic salmon is looking brighter with every passing month. There is no doubt in my mind that we have the answer to the salmon’s problems. All we have to do is put them into practice.”
The salmon is by no means saved — climate changes could yet overwhelm the best efforts of the NASF — but the irony is that this massive rescue operation has been brought about not by conservationists but by those whose interest lies in catching the very species they are determined to save. Those who have invested time, money and enormous diplomatic expertise in preserving the salmon have done so because they have a passion for sport rather than for nature.
So the unsurprising lesson is that to improve our rivers rather than depend wooly hatted eco-freaks we should rely on economic drivers such as this:
Salmon fishing buyers look to Axminster
More and more anglers are chasing after Britain's improving freshwater fish stocks - and nowhere is that more true than with the king of gamefish, the salmon. Prices are once again approaching their 1980s boom high. In those days, each salmon in the gamebook over a five-year average added £15,000 to the capital value of some Scottish estates.
Vantage Land is offering a unique opportunity to buy around 77 acres of flat land for sale in separate lots on the banks of the River Axe, including fishing rights on two of the lots.
A catch of just half a dozen salmon will more than match the £79,800 asking price for the 8-acre lot 5 and the £35,000 asking price for the 11 -acre lot 9.....