TAGGING EXERCISE SHOWS IRELAND IS STANDING IN THE WAY OF SALMON RESTORATION IN EUROPE:
Irish netsmen who intercept wild salmon returning to other countries are wrecking attempts to restore the native salmon stocks of several European countries including France, Germany, Spain and England, an international conference on salmon conservation was told.

Provided they are compensated, the netsmen themselves want to end this outdated trade because they can see the damage they are doing to wild stocks. Their earnings are also suffering because prices of both wild and artificially-reared salmon have been dragged down by the huge tonnage now produced in salmon farms. But the Irish Government has so far failed to subscribe to any solution that would limit the drift netting or share in compensation proposals that could save up to 500,000 salmon a year.

The conference in Santander was hosted by the Cantabria Regional Government (N. Spain) last month and attended by international experts and representatives of environmental authorities throughout the Iberian peninsula, Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia.

“Ireland’s failure to find a solution for its mixed stock fisheries has angered Governments as well as the private sector  throughout the world, “ said a spokesman for the North Atlantic Salmon Fund´s (NASF). “The Irish Government has so far refused to cooperate with other countries. It excuses its inaction by claiming it first needs to know the numbers of fish entering
its own rivers. It is ridiculous that Ireland's inability to count its fish is thwarting so many international conservation efforts. We have already given them 12 years of counting."

Often regarded as the King of Fish, the Atlantic salmon, once found from Portugal to the Arctic, has been intercepted to virtual extinction in continental Europe by Irish nets that target mixed stocks of salmon returning from their feeding grounds in the North Atlantic.

Salmon netting was prohibited in the Bay of Biscay in the 1940s to help fish restock their native rivers in the Iberian region. But Dr. García de Leániz, senior scientist at the Centro Ictiológico Institute in Cantabria, said that recoveries of tagged Spanish salmon revealed that they are being netted in a number of places along Ireland's west coast.  He highlighted an illustration showing Irish coastal areas where the Spanish and German tags had been recaptured.

The delegates were told that other recovered tags showed that the netting off Ireland's west coast is thwarting attempts by Irish scientists to help Germany restore the once-great salmon stocks of the Rhine, a programme on which German taxpayers are spending millions of Deutschmarks.

“Sad news” commented Peter Olbrich Chairman of the German Salmon and Sea Trout Society, LMS who has been fighting for salmon restoration in the German Water basins for more than a decade.  “First, Irish salmon scientists provided  invaluable salmon know-how and sold us eggs to found the populations like the Rhine and now the costly efforts are ruined by the driftnets of their own countrymen. Salmon restoration is meaningless until the mixed stock salmon fisheries in Ireland come to an end.  European salmon interests must now unite against this economical and ecologigal nonsense and medieval approach to sustainablity.”


The reaction of Spanish representatives was even stronger.  “The Irish Government continues to protect and facilitate commercial fisheries using a method deplored by all responsible scientific organisations worldwide,” said Javier Loring Armada, former President of the Real Asociacion Asturiana De Pesca Fluvial and currently NASF director for Spain. “Ireland has failed miserably, utterly and inescapably,”

Tags from fish released in French and British rivers have also been recovered. Commenting in Paris, Mr. Marc-Adrien Marcellier, NASF's director in France, said: “The Irish driftnet fishery poses unacceptable risks to the management of salmon stocks.  It violates environmental progress in the European community. We have asked the French Government to take appropriate action against the responsible Irish authorities.”

 NASF has already offered to negotiate buyouts and set-a-side programmes  for the Irish fisheries and the vast majority of professional netsmen have agreed to take part in a three-sided deal between angling and conservation interests, the netsmen and the Irish Government.

At the invitation of the Frank Fahey, Ireland´s Fisheries Minister, NASF experts have sent him detailed proposals for a new Irish salmon strategy. The plan covers conservation,  the compensation package, catch quotas and an angling tourist plan that could generate huge benefits for the economies of Ireland's rural areas. The main principles of the NASF plan have already won the support of the Irish National Salmon Commission, the body set up by the
Government to advise it on salmon management.

NASF's international chairman, Orri Vigfússon, said: “Apart from the desperate need to protect the stocks of their European neighbours Ireland has a real investment opportunity. Redirecting salmon caught in Irish nets to the recreational industry would inject vast sums into the rural angling sector and revitalise the tourist industry."

Wild Atlantic salmon numbers are at an all-time low and the fish is now regarded as threatened or an endangered species in Europe and the USA.  The North Atlantic Salmon Fund (Tel: +354-568 6277) is an international organisation dedicated to the conservation and restoration of wild Atlantic salmon.