The Scottish Government has introduced a range of measures designed to improve the conservation status of salmon by managing the pressure of exploitation through fishing within Scotland’s domestic waters. Such measures should be viewed in conjunction with other management activities being undertaken at a local level in the interests of conservation.
National Spring Conservation Measures came into force on Friday 09 January 2015 with the equivalent measure for the Tweed District in force on Saturday 31 January 2015.
Measures to regulate the killing of salmon for the 2017 season have been laid in the Scottish Parliament – The Conservation of Salmon (Scotland) Amendment Regulations and The Tweed Regulation (Salmon Conservation) (No. 2) Order 2016.
Fisheries Management Scotland is a member of the Salmon Liaison Group, which was created to steer the development of the methodology behind the conservation status system. A number of technical working groups have also been created which will be overseen by this primary group.
Our current focus is:
- To influence the further refinement of the model to ensure the outputs are as accurate as possible
- To ensure that the model and resulting categorisations are understood and well communicated
- To ensure that carcass tagging for net-caught fish for areas in categories 1 and 2 is fit for purpose.
- To explore alterations to spring conservation measures in accordance with local needs and information