Evidence. Solutions.
Partnership.

Wild Salmon Crisis

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

The Wild Salmon Crisis

HOW WE WORK

Act on what we know. 
Learn what we don’t. 
Scale up recovery.

The challenges facing wild Atlantic salmon cannot be solved by any one organisation, and knowledge alone will not secure recovery.

By sharing evidence, fostering collaboration and supporting partnerships, the Atlantic Salmon Trust helps bring people together around a common goal: restoring healthy rivers, coasts, seas, and thriving wild salmon populations.

Our Strategic Values

Evidence at the heart of what we do

An evidence-led approach has always been our first pillar. A reputation of sixty years of evidence gathering and understanding, enables us to not only mobilise our existing evidence base into workable restoration solutions right away, but also to prioritise the next research projects.

Future projects will aim to fill knowledge gaps relating to the pressures currently thought to be causing salmon decline. Continuing to refine and build on this foundation is essential, particularly in a fast-changing world where salmon and their cousins, sea trout, need to adapt quickly to emerging threats too.

We’re a founding member of the Missing Salmon Alliance, whose project, The Likely Suspects Framework, brings together evidence from international research partners across the salmon’s North Atlantic range to inform the actions which should be taken on the ground in river catchments. Our recent acoustic tracking projects, the Moray Firth Tracking Project and West Coast Tracking Project, are also adding to our understanding of what is happening to young salmon ‘smolts’ during their downstream freshwater and early marine migration phases. Some key knowledge gaps remain, particularly around what is happening to salmon at sea. We are working to fill those gaps.

Demonstrating wild salmon recovery at the catchment scale

Our Core Rivers are catchment-scale restoration partnership projects which look to provide the conditions wild salmon, and wider biodiversity, need to thrive – cold, clean water in naturally functioning, resilient watersheds from source to sea.

Core Rivers combine large scale habitat restoration work with the country’s most advanced wild salmon and wider environmental monitoring systems. This includes salmon tagging and tracking, sonar imaging counters, drone mapping, environmental DNA surveys, and wider assessments of hydrology, geomorphology and biodiversity.

Inspiring a wider network of restoration partnerships

The Partnership pillar of our strategy means taking the techniques from our Core Rivers and supporting a wider network of catchment partnerships to take action at scale and pace. Our Watershed Connections network now extends from the Outer Hebrides to the chalk streams of Hampshire.

Partnership also means working nationally and internationally with governments, our partners in the UK-wide Missing Salmon Alliance, and our counterparts across the North Atlantic and Pacific – including The Atlantic Salmon Federation, Norwegian Salmon Rivers, and the Pacific Salmon Foundation

OUR VISION

To halt the decline of wild Atlantic salmon and put the species on the path to recovery by 2050

The Atlantic Salmon Trust has set out an ambitious vision for 2050: to halt the decline of wild Atlantic salmon across their natural range and see increasing populations in more than half of the rivers they inhabit.

This vision reflects growing concern over the dramatic collapse of salmon numbers in recent decades, driven by a combination of climate change, habitat degradation, pollution, barriers to migration, and pressures in the marine environment.

Rather than focusing only on protecting the species from further decline, the Trust’s strategy aims to create the conditions required for long-term recovery and resilience.

Central to the strategy is the belief that effective conservation must be based on strong scientific evidence. The Trust invests heavily in research and monitoring to better understand where salmon are declining and why. This includes tracking salmon migration routes, studying river and ocean conditions, and analysing how factors such as warming water temperatures, land use, and disease affect survival.

By improving the evidence base, we aim to identify the most important pressures on salmon populations and target restoration efforts where they can have the greatest impact.

5 Goals for 5 Years: 2023-2028

Our 5 in 5 goals were first set out in 2023 – targets that we set ourselves to work towards which would help move the dial for wild Atlantic salmon and the environments they depend on. Our progress towards these goals can be found in our Annual Review and Impact Reports.

1

DEFINE

Define why salmon are declining and continue to fill knowledge gaps.

2

IDENTIFY

Identify and prioritise the manageable pressures influencing that decline, and publish up-to-date position papers.

3

DESIGN

Design and conduct a catchment audit framework leading to catchment-scale habitat restoration on each of our Core Rivers.

4

DEMONSTRATE

Demonstrate the implementation of catchment-scale restoration work on our Core Rivers and monitor the effect of this work over time.

5

CREATE

Create a wider network of catchment partnerships across the country to restore wild salmon and their habitats at scale.

Together we can give wild Atlantic salmon a thriving future.

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