Wild Atlantic Salmon Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Viscount Trenchard
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Wild Atlantic Salmon
Viscount Trenchard Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean on bringing this much-needed debate. I declare my interests as a member of the Endsleigh Fishing Club, which is the largest riparian owner of the River Tamar, and that my brothers-in-law are owners of stretches of the Rivers Laggan and Sorn in Islay.
Governments of all colours have not done enough to protect this wonderful species, which has in the past graced our rivers in abundance. Others have spoken of the damage caused by the open cage fish farming industry, which clearly needs much stricter regulation and must be required to adhere to much higher standards. This has particularly affected salmon runs in Scotland, but salmon runs in English rivers have completely collapsed too. There are, as far as I know, no salmon farms in England, so there are other causes of the steep decline in the salmon population. For example, seven salmon have been caught to date on the Tamar this year. That compares with 146 in 2010.
There has also been an explosion in the populations of seals, beavers and predatory seabirds, especially cormorants. It is ridiculous that river-keepers are given licences to shoot only two or three birds, when they should be allowed to shoot as many as they can.
A major cause of the decline of salmon in many rivers is the very large by-catch of salmon and sea trout taken by the burgeoning inshore fisheries. This is a huge problem on the River Tamar and other south-western rivers.
In 2007, my fellow directors of the Endsleigh Fishing Club on the Tamar, aware of the successful reintroduction of salmon to the north Tyne, hired Peter Gray, the legendary former manager of the Kielder hatchery, to reopen the Endsleigh hatchery. Unfortunately, the Environment Agency was determined to ensure that the experiment would fail by adopting a very unco-operative approach, preventing Mr Gray using the same methods that it had permitted at Kielder. The money we had invested in reopening the hatchery was wasted. Can the Minister tell us whether the EA still maintains the ambivalent attitude to hatcheries that it did in those days?