The Allt Lorgy River Restoration Project and biologist Bob Kindness’ acclaimed stock restoration programme on the River Carron were honoured on Friday (2nd August) in a joint ceremony in the highlands.
With salmon now officially classed as endangered in the UK, the SGA Wild Salmon Conservation Award was inaugurated by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association’s Fishing Group in July.
Designed to honour projects which are helping to restore declining salmon stocks, the elegant award was presented for the first time on Friday at Moy Country Fair, Inverness-shire, by MSP Fergus Ewing.
Since carrying out pioneering work to restore the Allt Lorgy burn, a tributary of the River Dulnain near Carrbridge, a four-fold increase in juvenile salmon has been recorded by Spey Fishery Board monitors.
The project, which rehabilitated a canalised section of the burn and removed man-made constraints, also involved Seafield Estate, SEPA and the Cairngorms National Park Authority.
Embankments were removed, woody structures were introduced into the river and new features were added through gravel reintroduction, creating conditions to help spawning salmon.
On the River Carron in Wester Ross, biologist and salmon expert, Bob Kindness, has overseen a mindful stocking programme which has seen fish numbers rise from a five year average of 10.6 in 2001 to 187.2 in 2020.
The painstaking work, spanning years and the collection of over 6000 DNA samples, is now shedding new scientific light on how rearing from in-river broodstock could be used in future to save salmon from local extinctions.
When work started on the river, stocks of salmon and sea trout had virtually collapsed.
Now, early science being undertaken by Rivers and Lochs Institute at Inverness College UHI is showing positive signs that stocked salmon are returning to the river as adults in healthy numbers.
Speaking on behalf of the Allt Lorgy project, Roger Knight, Chief Executive of the Spey Catchment Initiative, stated: “Jointly winning the inaugural SGA Wild Salmon Conservation Award is a tremendous honour.
“We look forward to continuing to work closely with estates and their staff to help deliver larger landscape-scale projects to make our rivers more resilient to climate change and support the recovery of our iconic Atlantic salmon.”
Bob Kindness was also delighted to have his work recognised: “What we have been doing on the Carron is now beginning to produce scientific evidence that will be difficult to ignore.
“If anything, in my view, we started on the Carron, late.
“What decision makers like Marine Scotland need to realise is that restoration is much, much harder to do if you let things decline too far before any work is commenced. This is not about saving fisheries now, it’s about the species as a whole."
Hugh Hynd from the SGA Fishing Group, the body that established the award, said picking a single winner proved too difficult.
“Both projects are excellent. The judges were split down the middle. What they both do is help salmon and that is what we want this award to encourage, for everyone.”
