Hatcheries or Habitat Improvement ?

[lomond]

What's your opinion on the best ways to improve salmon numbers on a system ?

Is it a hatchery, habitat improvement or a combination of both ?

Lomond

[builnacraig]

Surely it depends on the situation. Look at what Bob Kindness has done on the Carron with his hatchery work. There the river was relatively pristine but the stock had disappeared due to problems at sea - stocking works well in that situation.

Same with a river suffering from acidification. If the eggs are not hatching then a hatchery to get them past that stage is the only answer.

Take a lowland agricultural river, (or tributaries of a larger river) then it is more than likely that the habitat is pretty degraded and habitat improvement could make a big difference.

[betanut]

To my mind it has to be a combination of both, to begin with at least. You build the hatchery/ies in an attempt to boost subsequent generations whilst continually attempting to improve the river habitat.
Once you are 'happy' that your habitat restoration/improvement is as good as you're likely to get it then you would hopefully be in a position to monitor how many fish are spawning naturally in their managed habitat........ from there you can, in theory, estimate how busy a hatchery needs to be in oder to help augment the stock. I'd advocate keeping a hatchery going at all times anyway as actually sampling the stock on an annual basis for study is a no bad thing and with a hatchery there's usually an upside of a few fish to return to the river.

The key though - without a doubt - is habitat improvement and then management. There's no point in doing all the hard work then letting it fall by the wayside, improvement and management need to be structured and with a long term goal in mind. With salmon, that's not hard