Salmon Watch Ireland has highlighted, since it’s inception in 2004, the alarming decline of Atlantic salmon and sea trout in Ireland. Ireland’s Atlantic Salmon resource is rapidly declining from the historic adult runs of up to 2 million fish in the 1970’s to less than 250 thousand fish now reaching our shores.We are dedicated to the conservation of Atlantic salmon and Sea trout in Ireland and will endeavor to shape government policy to protect this iconic species.

Saving the Irish Salmon

A policy statement adopted by the Board of Salmon Watch Ireland for consultation with the wild salmon community

The role of Salmon Watch Ireland (SWIRL)

Stand up for the salmon and its conservation. The recreational, economic and social values of the salmon are undoubted but they can only be realised if the species continues to exist;

Alert the public as a whole, and not just those with a direct interest, to the plight of the salmon and the measures than will be needed to reverse its decline. From what follows in this document it will be clear that considerable political clout will be needed to accomplish at least some of the measures needed to rescue our salmon stocks (such as in relation to open cage salmon farming) and that will involve greater public understanding of the issues.

Salmon Watch Ireland - Habitat Decline

Campaign relentlessly with the Government and its agencies for specific measures outlined in this document and for a ‘whole of government’ approach to saving the salmon. Inland Fisheries Ireland is primary among the agencies concerned but they also include IFI’s ‘parent’ the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment together with Marine Institute, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and local authorities.

Subject to resources becoming available to SWIRL to provide a service to anglers, fishery owners and managers and community organisations to enable them establish bodies like river trusts to take on the planning, implementation and management of conservation measures at local level.

Cooperating with other like-minded NGOs at home and abroad. Working towards a common approach to conserve salmonid stocks through protection of habitats and ecosystems. 

It is no exaggeration to suggest that, in the lifetime of people living today, Ireland’s wild Atlantic salmon could become a curiosity confined, at best, to a small number of rivers if current trends continue. It is clear that greatly increased mortality at sea combined with climate change is the single most important factor in the decline of salmon stocks.  In addition, particularly man-made threats such as salmon farming and river barriers are major problems to be addressed.

In the face of these facts SWIRL proposes that the rational management approach is to re-double efforts to address factors impacting on productivity to ensure that ….salmon rivers….produce the maximum number of healthy wild salmon smolts.

In pursuit of that objective SWIRL has the following demands and proposals:

  • SWIRL demands a cross-government recognition of the need to include salmon habitat enhancement in its measures to adapt our rivers for climate change.
  • SWIRL demands a concerted programme for the removal of all redundant river barriers within the next ten years and the optimisation of migratory fish passage on all other major barriers.
  • SWIRL supports the elimination of all commercial net fisheries, with appropriate compensation of those affected, and the reduction of exploitation by all other means.
  • SWIRL contends that open net salmon farming is unsustainable, needs to be phased out as a matter of urgency and replaced with closed containment systems. No further licences for open net farms should be issued and during the phase out period strict, hard law rules on the environmental impact of the farms should be enforced.  A new aquaculture authority responsible for setting standards, licencing, regulation and enforcement needs to be established independent of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
  • SWIRL is opposed to the indiscriminate restocking of salmon rivers but recognises that in limited, strictly controlled circumstances, restocking may have a role to play in maintaining a stock for recreational purposes in certain rivers.
  • SWIRL urges the government to give priority to and accelerate the bringing up to date of fisheries legislation to enable the more effective use of the protection resources of IFI.
  • SWIRL believes that IFI does not have, and will not have, the level of resources necessary for the adequate ‘protection, management and conservation’ of our salmon stocks and that it must, therefore, implement a genuinely collaborative approach to working with stakeholders in the salmon community.
  • SWIRL advocates the bringing under the aegis of one government department all those activities which impinge on environmental protection and the maintenance of biodiversity.
  • SWIRL supports engagement with the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation.