Core Rivers

Wild Salmon Crisis

The wild Atlantic salmon population in Great Britain is now endangered.

SCIENCE INTO ACTION

A new benchmark in catchment-scale wild salmon recovery.

Core Rivers have redefined what catchment-scale wild salmon restoration projects can look like. Driven by partnership, guided by nature, powered by innovation and dedicated to a long-term, sustainable vision.

What goes into a Core River?

1

Catchment-Scale Restoration

Core Rivers undertake catchment-scale ecological restoration work focused on giving wild salmon free access to cold, clean water in a biodiverse and resilient watershed.

2

Cutting Edge Monitoring

They also operate cutting-edge salmon population and wider environmental monitoring systems to measure and demonstrate the success of their restoration work over time.

Project Laxford

Launched in 2021, Project Laxford is a catchment-scale wild salmon and ecological restoration project on the River Laxford, northwest Sutherland. In partnership with Grosvenor’s Reay Forest Estate.

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Project Deveron

Launched in 2023, Project Deveron is delivered in partnership with the Deveron, Bogie & Isla Rivers Charitable Trust – working to restore the River Deveron catchment in Aberdeenshire.

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HOW CORE RIVERS WORK

Step 1: Establish a Baseline

Core Rivers conduct a full ‘catchment audit’ by gathering existing information about the river system, its wild salmon population and wider biodiversity. From here, we generate a plan which defines the issues preventing wild salmon recovery, and the potential for restoration, using salmon population data modelling techniques.

HOW CORE RIVERS WORK

Step 2: Ecosystem Restoration Plan

Next we design and implement a catchment-wide ecological restoration plan to tackle issues identified in the catchment audit, working and engaging with local community stakeholders and land managers. This work looks to give wild salmon free access to cold, clean water in a biodiverse and resilient watershed extending from source to sea.

HOW CORE RIVERS WORK

Step 3: Monitoring Plan

Monitoring ensures that a range of methods are in place in order to measure the success of restoration work over time on the wild salmon population and wider biodiversity.  

Techniques include: 

Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tagging of juvenile salmon ‘parr’ to monitor fish behaviour, movement and marine survival rates.
Smolt enumeration to calculate the number and health of juvenile salmon ‘smolts’ exiting freshwater and beginning their ocean migration.
Sonar imaging cameras to accurately calculate numbers of adult salmon returning to spawn.
Invertebrate sampling.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis to map species diversity.
Water temperature monitoring.
Advanced ecological drone mapping to monitor changes to the landscape.

HOW CORE RIVERS WORK

Step 4: Demonstrate and Share Success

The ultimate goal of Core Rivers is to share successful restoration solutions, backed by evidence, demonstrating their positive impact on wild salmon populations. We aim to share this knowledge outward to support wider wild salmon recovery efforts across the country and beyond.

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