Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan: annual progress report 2025

Progress Summary

Progress in 2025 demonstrates steady delivery across all six themes of the Implementation Plan. All actions have now been initiated, with a growing number completed and the remainder progressing, although a small number remain behind schedule. Key achievements during the year included habitat access improvements, strengthened regulation, expanded monitoring and the continued development of the scientific evidence base.

In many cases, however, the biological response of salmon populations will take time to detect, may be obscured to some extent by factors that cannot readily be addressed, and may be difficult to attribute to any single intervention, given the multiple pressures affecting salmon throughout their lifecycle.

Together, these efforts are intended to improve the number, quality and resilience of wild smolts leaving Scotland's rivers, reduce avoidable mortality in freshwater, estuarine and coastal environments, and strengthen the evidence available for future management decisions.

A summary of progress against each of the 6 Scottish Wild Salmon Strategy themes is provided in the following pages, with full action updates set out in the Appendix.

High-level Dashboard Snapshot

All 59 Implementation Plan actions initiated.

29 continuous management actions (i.e. no identified end point)

6 actions completed in previous reporting years

4 actions completed in this reporting year

14 actions in progress

* 6 actions in progress but behind the schedule originally envisaged in the Implementation Plan