Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan Delivery Group minutes: October 2024

Attendees and apologies

Delivery Group Members

• Antje Branding, Marine Directorate
• Mark Bilsby, Atlantic Salmon Trust
• Sarah Robinson, Scottish Wildlife Trust (representing Scottish Environment Link)
• Jamie Stewart, River Tweed Commission
• Alison Baker, Angling Scotland
• Alan Wells, Fisheries Management Scotland
• Roger Knight, Spey Catchment Initiative
• John Armstrong, SG Marine Directorate
• Steven Dora, SG Marine Directorate
• Jamie Ribbens, Galloway Fisheries Trust
• Fiona Simpson, Crown Estate Scotland
• Roy Richardson, SEPA
• Colin Bean, NatureScot

Other Attendees

• Chloe Grant, Fisheries Management Scotland
• Sam Turner, SG Environment and Forestry Directorate
• Hazel Wilson, SG Marine Directorate
• Cameron Sinclair, SG Marine Directorate
• Blair Hunter, SG Marine Directorate
• Amy Kidd, NatureScot
• Liz McLachlan, NatureScot
• Aidan Robson, SG Environment and Forestry Directorate
• Elaine Tait, SG Marine Directorate
• Molly Nurse, SG Marine Directorate
• Michelle Campbell, SG Marine Directorate
• Vanessa Brown, SG Marine Directorate

Apologies:

• Caro Cowan, SG Marine Directorate
• Donald Fraser, NatureScot
• Alexa MacAuslan, Northern DSFB
• Linsey Mason-McLean, Scottish Forestry

Items and actions

Welcome and apologies

The chair welcomed all to the meeting, announced apologies (as listed above) and invited a round of introductions. The wild salmon and recreational fisheries team was again at full strength with a number of recent appointments (Steven Dora, Cameron Sinclair and Blair Hunter) whilst Vanessa Brown would be going on maternity leave in the near future.

Minutes of the last meeting and actions

The minutes of the previous meeting (13 June 2024 - paper 2) were agreed. It was also agreed that in future, minutes would be formally agreed at the subsequent meeting to allow sufficient time for comments and feedback prior to them being published.
Policy updates

The Chair provided a short update, including the recently published programme for government.

A question was asked on whether the wild salmon strategy’s vision sufficiently captured the heightened sense of urgency implicit in the international union for the conservation of nature’s reclassification (in December 2023) of atlantic salmon as endangered. The chair reflected this to the group which took an action to collectively consider prior to the next meeting.

• action point 1 – all to consider whether the wild salmon strategy vision statement should be reviewed further to the international union for the conservation of nature’s reclassification of atlantic salmon in Great Britain and provide comments via correspondence.

A group member queried the approach to be taken for introducing statutory targets for nature recovery in the natural environment bill. An action was taken for the wild salmon and recreational fisheries team to confer with environment and forestry colleagues on this topic and report back to the group.

• action point 2 – wild salmon and recreational fisheries team to provide an update at the next meeting on the statutory underpinning for nature recovery targets

Roy Richardson provided an update from scottish environment protection agency. River basin management plans  were last reviewed in 2021 and scottish environment protection agency was currently half way through the latest review cycle which required working with an array of delivery partners. 

Scottish water was taking forward improvement works on 58 out of 64 of its sites.  

34 existing hydro scheme consents were under review.

Scottish environment protection agency had identified 57 priority catchments where agricultural diffuse pollution was a concern and was undertaking some 800 farm visits this year to monitor diffuse pollution compliance with improvements taking longer than originally expected to become evident.

Work to produce a new sea lice risk assessment framework was under way. 

Ongoing work to ease artificial barriers to fish migration had identified a total of 360 barriers. To date, 25 had been completely removed restoring access to approximately 170 miles of habitat. 113 barriers had been identified as requiring no action and 109 barriers were at various stages of discussion for removal. Progress was often protracted and required multiple considerations but the overall intention was that the majority of barrier removal would take place in the final 3 years of the current RBMP cycle.

A discussion ensued on the rate of progress and what SEPA’s projected targets were for barrier removal in each of the 3 years remaining under the current river basin management plan. Roy offered to provide a more detailed breakdown at a subsequent meeting.

• action point 3 – scottish environment protection agency to provide a more detailed breakdown of their plans for barrier removal under a dedicated agenda item at the next meeting of the wild salmon strategy implementation plan delivery group.

Marine directorate seal licensing review

Elaine Tait provided an update on the review of the operation of the seal licensing regime which Scottish Ministers are required to undertake within 5 years of the previous review under s.129 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. 

Under the terms of the act, Scottish Ministers must have regard to such scientific evidence on seal biology, welfare and behaviour as they consider relevant and consult united kingdom research and innovation and such other persons as they consider relevant. The report is required to be published no later than September 2025 and the consultation process is expected to start in January 2025. 

The species team had set a provisional target date of June 2025 to complete the report to allow time for the parliamentary process prior to the September deadline.  

Elaine took an action to update the group on the review’s progress at the next meeting.

• action point 4 - Elaine Tait to provide an update on the progress of the marine directorate seal licensing review at the next meeting of the wild salmon strategy implementation plan delivery group.

A brief discussion took place on the level of demand for the seal management professional development award course offered by the university of the highlands and islands and an action was taken by the group for any organisation interested in the course to notify marine directorate’s species team.

• action point 5 - any organisation interested in fielding candidates to the seal management professional development course run by the university of the highlands and islands to notify marine directorate’s species team.

Observed inconsistencies in the effectiveness of deployed acoustic seal management devices was raised and Elaine clarified that non-lethal control measures would fall within the scope of the review. fisheries management scotland took an action to share data collected from their members on the effectiveness of acoustic deterrent devices deployed across 20 rivers in Scotland and Elaine offered to feed this information back to the special committee on seals  for them to consider in December 2024.

• action point 6 - Fisheries management scotland to collate information from members on the effectiveness of acoustic deterrent devices for submission to marine directorate’s species team in time for onward submission to special committee on seals in December 2024.

NatureScot species licensing review

Liz MacLean provided an overview of the NatureScot species licensing review which was first outlined in the Scottish Government and Scottish Green party shared policy programme and subsequently commissioned by the minister for green skills, circular economy and biodiversity in early 2024. The review covers 3 key areas.

• compliance with legislation: this included lethal control licensing with the operation of the legislation being tested under judicial review 3 years ago such that NatureScot was unable to favour one species over another. NatureScot had opted for providing “derogations of least impact” meaning lethal control was a last resort.
• cost recovery on licences: Scottish Ministers had asked NatureScot to explore a similar arrangement to other united kingdom administrations where charges are levied for licences under a tiered system and the revenue generated helped resource the licensing service. Various charging options were being considered in Scotland including tiered costing but consideration was at an early stage.
• greater transparency: NatureScot was considering a public register of licensing with a key considerations being general data protection regulation compliance and safeguards against the information aiding criminal activity.

NatureScot was launching a stakeholder questionnaire on 24 October (closing date 20 November) with the associated report going to the Scottish Government in January 2025.  Liz took an action to circulate a link to the questionnaire to the delivery group.

• action point 7 - Liz to circulate to the delivery group a link to the NatureScot stakeholder engagement questionnaire.

In answering a query on the extent to which the review process might support greater harmonisation of licensing to support wild salmon strategy actions (particularly in view of the recategorisation of the atlantic salmon in great britain by the international union of conservation of nature), it was advised that the review had not been designed to meet this level of specificity. The delivery group was keen to further explore how this need would be met and the wild salmon and recreational fisheries team took an action to include an opportunity to discuss this question further at a future meeting.

• action point 8 - wild salmon and recreational fisheries team to include an agenda item to further discuss if and how species licensing could be more attuned to meeting wild salmon strategy objectives at the next meeting.

Science and evidence board

John Armstrong provided an update on work being undertaken by the wild salmon strategy science and evidence board to develop evidence for the delivery group on recovery stocking. Key points were that all stocking options came with risks and uncertainties, and identifying and addressing the driver(s) for a population decline (e.g. habitat degradation which includes water quality) should always take precedent.

In summary, the two options which carried the least risk were as follows:

• no intervention by stocking, thereby allowing the population to adapt naturally to new environmental conditions. Thus allowing conservation resources to focus on river/habitat restoration and other drivers of improving conditions to help salmon populations thrive, but which ran the risk of a population declining to a point where the risk of extirpation became credible.
• kelt reconditioning and/or smolt to adult stocking which potentially required a long-term commitment at the outset, was resource intensive, had no guarantee of recovery and reduced the likelihood of recovery through natural adaptation.

It was also noted that the north atlantic salmon conservation organization terminology used to describe the threshold where recovery stocking might be considered (i.e. wild salmon are present in low numbers, are considered under threat of extirpation and the runs are far below the conservation limit) was not clearly defined.

The science and evidence board was working on a further document that would contain management directions following their review of the science. A request was made for a flowchart setting out actions to explain the framework. The chair clarified that a public consultation would follow on stocking in due course. John took an action to circulate the advice to the wild salmon strategy implementation plan delivery group to support further discussion once delivery group members had an opportunity to review.

• action point 9 - science and evidence board chair to circulate science and evidence board's advice on recovery stocking of Atlantic salmon into weak populations to the wild salmon strategy implementation plan delivery group.

Fisheries management scotland enforcement committee paper

Short items (river gradings – use of assessment and draft scottish angling pathway action plan)

Given time constraints the chair asked the agenda items on fisheries management scotland enforcement committee paper and scottish angling pathway action plan be addressed in correspondence with fisheries management scotland.

• action point 10 - Alan to email the delivery group seeking comments on the fisheries management scotland enforcement committee paper (paper 3) and the scottish non-native species pathway action plan (paper 4), noting the 2 week deadline for comments on the latter

Update on communications strategy and communications plan

Chloe Grant provided an overview of the draft wild salmon strategy communications strategy and accompanying plan (Papers 5 and 6 respectively) and materials circulated prior to the meeting. Delivery group members wanted to flag that effective communication was extremely important, that key messages should highlight that salmon are an endangered species and that the risk of extinction required urgent action. 

The focus should be on setting and meeting expectations, funding mechanisms and achieving impact. It was also agreed that care should be taken for the comms strategy to be entirely consistent with the wild salmon strategy and not seek to rewrite, exceed or undermine it. The delivery group took a collective action to provide feedback on papers 5 and 6 via email.

• action point 11 – all to provide written feedback to Chloe on the communication strategy and plan

Focus of next meetings

This agenda item was skipped due to time constraints.

Date of next meeting

The next meeting would be scheduled for January or February 2025 and it was agreed that the meeting duration would be extended to 3 hours in order to adequately cover the agenda.

In closing the meeting, the Chair said she would email the group in the near future to clarify actions and timescales.

Any other business

No any other business items were tabled.