The current status of Atlantic Salmon in North Wales - Should we be worried?
Atlantic Salmon have been declining rapidly across the UK for a number of decades now, with Wild Atlantic Salmon in Britain being classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red list. This has been common knowledge amongst fisheries experts for quite some time, and has resulted in increased protection and monitoring of wild populations within British waters.
Last week Natural Resources Wales published their annual report on Salmon stock assessments for 2025, using the word ‘Crisis’ to summarise their findings.
Across all of Wales rod catches were significantly lower than in previous years, which implies a decrease in the amount of returning fish to Welsh rivers. That being said, the fishing effort (amount of rod licenses and number of days fished by anglers) was also significantly lower than in previous years; this may have affected the results of catch reports across England and Wales. Positively, the number of Salmon released by anglers was the highest it has been since records began.
Most importantly however, the stock estimates for the number of returning fish and the estimates of egg deposition has led to all of Wales’ principle Salmon rivers to be classed as ‘At Risk’. Abundance surveys of juvenile Salmon in Wales suggest that our rivers are still able to support Salmon during their early life stages, which is a testament to the important work carried out to preserve these pressured habitats.
This does however highlight the most apparent issue for Salmon during their lifecycle to be during their marine phase. Other studies have also stated the marine phase of life to be the most impactful to wild Salmon returning to Wales.
With such low numbers of returning fish and egg deposition, the conservation of returning adults and river habitats has never been so important. In order to hold onto our wild Salmon stocks in Wales we need to continue to give the few returning fish and the juvenile Salmon the best chance at completing their lifecycles.
