IF the noble salmon returns in significant numbers, as is hoped, to the rivers of the south-east it may at last have a fighting chance of establishing itself and surviving the multiple hazards which it faces.
In the latest of a series of moves to conserve and protect fish stocks on a co-ordinated basis, anglers from several counties flanking the Barrow river have come together to form a Barrow Catchment Management Committee.
The great river systems of the Barrow, the Nore and the Suir, along with the Slaney to the east, are perhaps the key defining topographical feature of the whole region.
They constitute an immense natural resource, although they give rise, also, to substantial infrastructural problems - a subject to which this column will necessarily return often.
All anglers are concerned about the alarming decline that salmon stocks in the rivers have suffered in the past year. With the perception that a rescue strategy is in everyone's interests and requires joint action rather than rivalry and competition between netsmen and anglers, the bones of an overall plan are taking shape.
Following recommendations in the Salmon Task Force Report to the Minister for the Marine, fishing interests concerned with the Barrow, Nore and Suir have agreed to set up management committees for each of the three rivers.
They will then combine in a three-rivers catchment management committee whose title has yet to be decided. This joint group will supply agreed representatives to a proposed national salmon conservation committee.
The secretary of the new Barrow committee, Mr Eamonn Moore of Carlow, comments: "A superb opportunity is now available, which we haven't had before, to do things right. Both netsmen and anglers have an opportunity of advising and being able to influence conservation.
The Barrow committee has already drawn up a constitution and a statement of objectives, and is working on a river statement for inclusion in an overall catchment plan. Similar projects are in train for the Nore and the Suir.
The priorities are to secure and augment spawning stocks, agree management measures on a catchment scale, define community-driven objectives, and agree on equitable sharing of resources.
The group has already secured the participation of the traditional "snap" netters and is continuing efforts to draw in the draft net operators.
It is not as hopeless a cause as it might seem, Eamonn Moore insists. "When we met the snap-net men, they said: `We always thought you had horns and tails', and we said: `We always thought you had them.'"
The work is urgent. Stocks are seriously down, and some of the smaller rivers have seen no fish at all this year. "The commercial term being used is that stocks are non-existent," said Mr Moore.
With commitment to co-operation, a multi-faceted resource of vital commercial, recreational and tourism value may have a chance of being recovered and preserved.