Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan: annual progress report 2025
The third annual progress report under the Scottish wild salmon strategy implementation plan covering progress in 2025.
Theme 3: Understanding and mitigating pressures in the marine and coastal environment (9 actions)
Dashboard Snapshot
8 continuous management actions (i.e. no identified end point)
1 action in progress
Headline Impact
- Completion of major national telemetry datasets, including the West Coast Tracking Project
- Expansion of marine monitoring programmes, including sea lice surveillance
- Evidence informed development of the Sea Lice Regulatory Framework, which is now available for application and use.
Key Achievements
- Improved understanding of marine migration distribution and behaviour
- Expansion of evidence base on interactions with aquaculture and other marine developments
- Integration of research outputs into policy and regulatory frameworks
Over the course of 2025, progress was made to further understand and protect salmon in our marine and coastal environment.
Strong partnership working through several key projects is improving understanding of migratory distributions and behaviour of Scottish salmon post-smolts and potential interactions with marine developments.
Developments are underway for the National Marine Plan 2 (NMP2). This work is taking into account the interests of wild Atlantic salmon and other protected species and NMP2 will aid sustainable management of the shared marine environment in marine decision making.
In March 2025, the Scottish Government responded in writing to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee’s report on its follow up inquiry into salmon farming in Scotland across the range of issues explored by the Committee, including farmed and wild fish interactions. An interim update was provided in September 2025.
In the summer of 2025, the Scottish Government worked with SEPA to extend the National Electrofishing Programme for Scotland (NEPS) survey design to include rivers in the Northern Isles and smaller rivers dominated by sea trout on the west coast that are not covered by Conservation Regulations (see Theme 6, action C). This aimed to strengthen the evidence base in support of the Sea Lice Regulatory Framework. In December 2025, it was confirmed that strategic monitoring of data-poor rivers in the Northern Isles will be undertaken in the summer of 2026, co-ordinated by SEPA and co-funded by Scottish Government. This will supplement juvenile monitoring under existing Environmental Management Plans.
The Scottish Government led initial discussions involving the fish farming sector, FMS on behalf of Scotland’s District Salmon Fishery Boards, and NatureScot, on what a penalties system for fish farm escapes might look like. These discussions were an early step in developing options, and wider engagement with relevant stakeholders will be considered as the work progresses. The ultimate aim is to explore whether funds arising from such a system could be ring-fenced or redistributed to support wild salmonid conservation and research.