Issues on our rivers...and some solutions
When we investigated the possible causes of the decline in the Wye salmon fishery in the mid 1990s, we found a range of problems had combined to put the stocks of fish and river environment into a very poor state. Barriers to fish migration, diffuse and point pollution, acidification and habitat degradation were the primary causes. The subsequent reduction in the salmon population caused by these problems meant that the level of salmon exploitation then impacted as a secondary cause.
It wasn't simply the number of problems but also the extent to which each and almost every tributary had been affected that had caused the severity of the decline. With the exception of acidification, these same problems were found on each catchment that we turned our attention to, such as the Usk, Lugg and Arrow. As a result, the same types of remedies, described in our projects section were applied across all these catchments.
To understand the problems on a catchment scale it is helpful to look at the charts & map below.
