The Salmon Group report will, if implemented, replace one set of problems with another, suggests Noel Wilkins
In principle, the report from the Independent Salmon Group which this week recommended a ban on drift-net fishing is a good document. Every sector will find things in the report that are acceptable and some that are harsh.
The commercial fishermen will find the proposed ban on drift-netting harsh and unnecessary, but the proposed hardship fund of €30 million is not ungenerous. Anglers will be happy with the ban, but will resent the "stamp" charge and the prohibition on all angling in many rivers. To coastal communities it may be seen as another stroke in a death of a thousand cuts.
Poachers and those who buy from them, on the other hand, will be delighted.
In recommending certain actions that will be needed in the future as if these were new, the report makes little enough acknowledgment of the tremendous effort of the bodies and agencies that have worked wonders in modernising our salmon management strategy in recent years.
They have brought the harvesting and management of this precious resource to a level of professionalism and legality unknown in earlier times. To some, this report will be a denial of all their effort to date. To others it will be its culmination.
Will the "new" strategy put an end to the divisive and hurtful debate on the best mode of harvesting what remains of one of our best-loved natural resources, the wild Atlantic salmon?
First let us consider some of the good and not so good points of the proposal.
The good features include:
1: It supports the advice and recommendations of the Standing Scientific Committee of the Salmon Commission. This is the best scientific advice we have on the state of the Irish salmon stocks and it conforms to best international advice and practice.
2: It builds on the strategy introduced by previous reports, especially that of the Salmon Management Task Force of 1996, by:
maintaining the conservation limit (spawning escapement) as the benchmark of the strategy in accordance with the original taskforce proposal;
using the carcass tag returns as the best, fairest and most reliable measure of the legal catch that we have for compensation purposes. To use any other measure could have rewarded those who fail to abide by the regulations;
recognising that in those rivers where the stock is below conservation limits all angling will be prohibited;
recognising that "catch and release" is not an adequate or acceptable strategy to justify continued angling in threatened rivers.
3: It recognises the principle that those stakeholders who stand to benefit from the banning of drift-netting should make some financial contribution to sustaining the resource into the future.
The less satisfactory features include:
1: The report is far too certain of the number of extra salmon to be anticipated as a surplus in the rivers due to elimination of the drift-nets. Nor does it project its analysis into the near future, even to the next year (2008).
2: It fails utterly to say how the "extra surplus" is to be harvested and managed. Will this be by draft nets, or riverine traps, or by rods? Who will be the main beneficiary? What are the guidelines for the management and control of this "extra" harvest? Will it be by the State or by private interests?
3: The report says that it has laid out "in section 3.2" the various options for the allocation of the new "surplus" (to processors, retailers and restaurateurs). Section 3.2 does not do this, nor does any other section.
The latter features are the main and serious deficiencies of the report, which recommends the immediate elimination of a legitimate drift-net fishery without giving any indication (beyond recommending the sale of rod-caught fish) as to how the consequences of the elimination are to be managed from the stock or the trade point of view.
To answer the question, then, whether the recommendations will end the debate on salmon harvesting, it is clear that, if implemented, the recommendations will change one set of problems for another.
The case for continued drift-netting has turned against the commercial sector, not least because of the desire of many in the fishery to exit voluntarily. (Some, of course, would wish to continue no matter how financially unrewarding the activity is, as the tables in the report indicate.)
The Irish drift-net fishery of today is not the main cause of the decline in Irish salmon stocks. It is a victim of the decline, not the cause.
The processing of wild Irish salmon will also cease immediately, with a grievous loss of another Irish delicacy in home and international markets. We are all, anglers included, victims of the decline, along with the non-fishing taxpayer who is now faced with the bill.
Was no case made for the gradual introduction of a ban on a phased basis, that would have allowed a phased response starting with voluntary exit? There is today no knowing where the "surplus" fish will end up, but one may guess.
Whether the strategy will result in an improvement in the size or health of native wild salmon stocks is also unknown. We do not have reliable, working fish counters on sufficient rivers to find this out.
Elimination of the commercial fishery will cause the end of the micro-coded-wire tagging programme so that we will have no reliable way to monitor sea survival, to the great detriment of our scientific stock analyses. What serious study of ranching has been commenced to initiate the proposed rebuilding of the stocks or to avail of the technology available to us?
We are about to enter a phase where there will be many losers and only a few gainers. Those who gain in their harvesting should now shoulder a greater portion of the cost of maintaining a resource that will pass from a public property right to become the private property right of anglers and fishery owners.
A once-off "stamp" that will average only €32 per angling licence, and that will not be determined by the actual number of salmon caught (this could be achieved by putting a charge on tags) is poor recompense to the nation for the loss. There is indeed a whole new set of problems in the offing!
Noel Wilkins is retired professor of zoology at National University of Ireland Galway. He specialised in the genetics of fish and shellfish, and has been researching salmon since 1967. He was chairman of the Salmon Management Task Force in 1996 and first chair of the Salmon Commission.