Against a backdrop of another challenging year, Fisheries Management Scotland welcomed member district salmon fishery boards and rivers and fisheries trusts to its fifth Annual General Meeting on 11 November 2021. Key achievements for the year were summarised, including our advocacy work across a range of issues of important to salmon and freshwater fish and the facilitation of ongoing funding support for our members, including:

• support from Scottish Government and Crown Estate Scotland to continue a wild fish monitoring programme for the west coast;
• coordination of funding to members for ongoing participation in the national electrofishing programme;
• coordination of funding to members for participation in a new adult salmon sampling programme;
• coordination and technical input to a national salmon pressures tool.

Fisheries Management Scotland recruited Charlotte Middleton as Aquaculture Interactions Manager in July, to support our members in their work on the management of interactions between farmed and wild salmonid fish. This post is jointly funded by Marine Scotland and Crown Estate Scotland, and we are grateful for their continued support.

At the beginning of 2021, Fisheries Management Scotland joining the Missing Salmon Alliance, and we are now working in a collaborative and strategic way with the other partners in the Alliance to help save our wild salmon stocks.

Three Directors of Fisheries Management Scotland – Mary Nicholson, Bill Whyte and Chris Conroy -retired from our Board and sincere thanks were expressed for their significant contributions to our work and for helping to make Fisheries Management Scotland increasingly influential.

Fisheries Management Scotland are delighted to welcome two new Directors to our Board – Alexa MacAuslan from the Northern District Salmon Fishery Board and Jamie Ribbens from the Galloway Fisheries Trust. We look forward to working with Alexa and Jamie.