Woods stresses partnership on salmon

Nominations for a new national commission on Atlantic salmon management are to be sought from next week, the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, has promised.

Representative organisations and interests will be invited to submit names for the new commission, which will be appointed to oversee and advise on the national salmon conservation management strategy, the Minister told a seminar in Dublin yesterday. However, there can be no more "winners and losers" in the debate, and a partnership approach towards the resource is vital, the Minister told some 200 participants attending a seminar on wild salmon, hosted by the Salmon Research Agency (SRA).

Referring to the Salmon Management Task Force report which was published by the previous government, the Minister said that it represented "real progress" in a debate which has long been "fraught with controversy and conflict".

Without committing himself to the task force's own recommendations, however, the Minister said that he intended to "build on" its work and his own assessment of the needs and priorities. The new commission was one of the task force's key proposals, an initiative which was regarded as the first attempt by any government in recent years to tackle the thorny issue.

The Minister has already moved on other task force proposals, including tagging and quotas, new conservation measures, and the installation of fish counters on key spring salmon rivers.

Yesterday he said that he was fully committed to a national catchment management strategy, and had asked the central and regional fisheries boards to develop six pilot projects which would inform and reinforce this.

The lack of information on the actual state of salmon stocks was highlighted at yesterday's seminar, which focused on the spring salmon only.

The chairman of the SRA, Mr Fionan O Muircheartaigh, said that spring salmon catches on key rivers had been declining "disastrously", and this could be a "dress rehearsal" for wild salmon stocks as a whole.

Catches on the Slaney in the 1990s, for example, were just over half of what they had been in the previous decade, and a quarter of the levels of the early 1960s. This was in spite of a reduction in netting and angling catches of the fish over five years, through a shortened season, he said.

While the reliability of catch statistics might be questioned, the general pattern portrayed had been reflected in the experience of anglers and commercial fishermen alike, Mr O Muircheartaigh said.

Where data on spring angling catches were collected - the Slaney, the Galway fishery, the Shannon (Castleconnell) and Lee (ESB and Cork sources) and Newport, Co Mayo, (fishery owner, Mr Kieran Thompson, and the Lough Beltra anglers) - only the Newport system gave cause for hope, he said.

Addressed by both national and international experts, yesterday's seminar was designed to agree on a spring salmon management plan which could be submitted to the Minister for consideration.

The Minister said he looked forward to receiving the conclusions.