The consultation ran from October to November last year, and we had representations from 39 individuals, which—for probably all sorts of reasons—was a significantly lower number than we had for last year’s consultation.
The concerns that were raised were actually quite balanced. A number of people expressed concern that individual river gradings were too low—indeed, one or two of those concerns had come to us before. We have written to people to explain that, although the assessment methodology has moved on quite significantly in the 12 months since last time and although we have made some significant changes, our assessment remains that the rivers in question are below their conservation status and that it is not sustainable to allow people to kill and retain salmon. However, fishing continues on those rivers.
Almost exactly the same number of people said to us, “We think you’ve given our river too high a grading.” There might be all sorts of reasons for that; one or two people told me that they were concerned that it gave an impression that the good times were back and there were lots of salmon in the river. Ever since the cabinet secretary launched the consultation in October and throughout our messaging on this, we have made it clear—and will continue to make it clear—that that is not the case and that there is a continuing downward trend in salmon returning to Scottish waters. The decline is actually quite steady at the moment. We are doing all sorts of things to try to address that, and I am sure that Simon Dryden and John Armstrong will talk about them later.
In short, we have made it very clear that within the boundaries of the model that we have developed, we can allow fish to be caught and retained on a greater number of rivers, but proper management arrangements must be in place. Quite a few rivers have gone from grade 3, which is mandatory catch and release, to grade 2, and we have made it clear this year that, with grade 2 rivers, the first line of defence is for catch and release to keep being promoted. Indeed, in grade 1 rivers where we think that exploitation continues to be sustainable, we always encourage people to catch and release as much as possible. In fact, every year more than 90 per cent of all fish caught by anglers are returned to the waters, which is helpful.
A number of individual cases were highlighted in the consultation. We have endeavoured to engage with everybody, and we have had quite an exchange of correspondence with all 39 of those who responded to the consultation, whether they were individual anglers, boards or whatever. We have written to them sometimes two or three times; we have talked to them on the phone; and we have had meetings with one or two of them. Indeed, later this week, we will have a catch-up meeting with the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association, with which we engaged last year on a number of issues, and next week we will meet the Forth Rivers Trust. That is part of our on-going engagement to find out people’s concerns with regard to the rivers.
The general message that emerged was that people accepted that we had taken big steps in developing the model this year. Some people still think that we have got things fundamentally wrong and that adult modelling is not the right approach, but we are doing other things around that. However, on the whole, we got a kind of split message this year. It was a bit odd.