Multi-million pound project launched to restore River Dee salmon

A multi-million-pound project has been launched to restore the River Dee and rejuvenate its spring salmon populations.

The 20-year initiative will also reduce the impacts of floods and droughts, benefitting all wildlife and communities, and it will involve the use of cutting-edge science.

The project is called “Save the Spring” and is supported by the leading organisations: the Atlantic Salmon Trust, the River Dee Trust, and the Dee District Salmon Fishery Board.

It comes amid concerns that Atlantic salmon may be heading towards endangered status in Britain.

Closer to home, the River Dee has had its poorest salmon season on record this year.

Dr Lorraine Hawkins, River Dee Director said “We must take urgent action to help preserve our wild salmon stocks, particularly the Dee’s iconic population of spring-run salmon, and this requires landscape-scale catchment restoration and the use of some pioneering techniques. We are acting at the scale needed to secure a long-term future for the species”.

Professor Melanie Smith from the Atlantic Salmon Trust said, “We all need to be focused on restoring salmon and their habitat at a catchment-scale if they are to overcome the challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change, as well as how we can use the most up-to-date translocation methods to save the most at-risk populations. This is arguably one of the most important projects to be launched for decades, and one which may act as a future blueprint for salmon restoration across Scotland”.