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GENEVA (May 31) XINHUA – The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has called for decisive action to save the wild Atlantic salmon from distinction.
‘More than 300 rivers have already lost their wild salmon stocks, and each year more rivers lose their salmon or show signs of rapidly decreasing spawning populations,’ WWF’s Henning Roed said Wednesday as government representatives gathered in Canada this week in the lead-up to the 17th North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO) meeting.
The causes of the decline are diverse but they are all man-made, said Roed, who is coordinating the WWF’s research. Dams and other river engineering works block the salmon’s passage to suitable spawning grounds. Industrial domestic and agricultural pollution destroys clean habitats. Farmed salmon, of which almost a million escape each year in Norway alone, are a risk to wild salmon because they spread diseases and parasites that can kill wild populations.
New WWF research shows that stocks of this species have plunged to their lowest ever levels. The wild Atlantic salmon, which spawns in freshwater but spends much of its life at sea, could be bound for extinction if current trends continue, according to the WWF.
In North America, the number of large salmon returning to their native rivers has dropped by 90 percent; the species has disappeared from more than three quarters of Baltic rivers in the last 100 years; and catches of salmon in Scotland and Ireland are down to roughly 25 percent of what they were three decades ago.
‘NASCO countries must institute catch limits based on scientific recommendations, and close mixed-salmon fisheries that adversely affect endangered salmon stocks,’ said Roed. ‘It’s vital for them to adopt standards for responsible salmon fish farming that stop its negative impact on wild stocks, and to oppose the introduction of genetically modified salmon.’
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