Should we all stop eating salmon? Why it’s suddenly become endangered
Al Jazeera
Why have Atlantic salmon populations dropped so dramatically in British rivers, and is fish farming a help or hindrance?
Atlantic salmon populations in England and Wales have plummeted to unprecedented lows, according to the Atlantic Salmon Stock Assessment for 2024, a report published this month by the United Kingdom Environment Agency and Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science.
According to the report by the two government agencies, a massive 90 percent of wild river salmon in England are classified as either “at risk” or “probably at risk”.
This latest classification is due to salmon stocks declining to levels that are insufficient for a self-sustaining salmon population.
“Forty years ago, an estimated 1.4 million salmon returned to UK rivers each year. We are now at barely a third of that – a new low and evidence of the wider, growing biodiversity crisis,” Alan Lovell, chairman of the Environment Agency, said when the report was released.
At the end of last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an international organisation dedicated to nature conservation, changed the status of Atlantic salmon from “least concern” to “endangered” in Great Britain on its Red List of Threatened Species.
