An international response on wild salmon

For anyone in Maine who remembers when salmon angling was a favorite pastime and offered up some good catches, today’s dire condition of Salmo salar must come as a shock. Fewer than 1,500 wild salmon returned to the Penobscot River last year, and the populations of eight smaller mid coast and Downeast rivers are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Just this month, however, a glimmer of hope for our wild Atlantic salmon came from the unusual locale of Vichy, France. The French city played host to a remarkable international annual convention called NASCO – the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization. While relatively few people have heard of it, NASCO has a vital role to play in the survival and recovery of wild Atlantic salmon.

NASCO was created in 1984 to address the declines of wild salmon across the North Atlantic community of nations. The need for an international approach was obvious – wild Atlantic salmon don’t recognize borders, and can migrate thousands of miles. Today, the “signatory nations” that attend the NASCO convention are represented by their federal governments and include the United States, Canada, The European Union, The Russian Federation, Norway, Iceland and Denmark (representing the Faroe Islands and Greenland), as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Atlantic Salmon Federation and the World Wildlife Fund.

Our own experience tells us that the international approach works. Up until 2002 for example, a commercial fishery in Greenland was catching tens of thousands of salmon feeding in those waters, among them the endangered salmon from Maine. Through negotiation by the Atlantic Salmon Federation, and our partner the North Atlantic Salmon Fund, and with financial support from the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to foster alternate industries, Greenland’s commercial salmon fishery is now under a moratorium, and the recently-concluded NASCO convention in Vichy served as a forum to successfully uphold the moratorium.

Think about that for a moment: delegates at a convention in France can negotiate fishery regulations in Greenland, and it will have a very relevant and direct impact on a salmon river in Maine. It’s just one example of why NASCO and its signatory nations need to work together on a level playing field for wild salmon protection and recovery. Individual nations can certainly be doing more at home to protect local habitats, but the NASCO conventions can help the North Atlantic nations achieve results collectively on an international level.

Early on, NASCO took the important step of passing resolutions to eliminate commercial salmon fisheries in international waters and reduce those on the salmon’s feeding grounds off the coasts of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Now, twenty years later, NASCO is beginning to address newer problems that were not appreciated back in the early 1980’s: climate change, loss of salmon habitat and the growth of the salmon aquaculture industry, to name a few.

With all this in mind, delegates attending the 2005 NASCO conference in early June have reasons to be optimistic about the organization’s role in preserving wild Atlantic salmon stocks. The organization’s “Next Steps” process will include ongoing public awareness about the plight of the wild salmon populations across the North Atlantic, clearer procedures to assess the nations’ commitment and progress in observing resolutions, and greater involvement of stakeholders like the Atlantic Salmon Federation and the World Wildlife Fund.

The lack of scientific research on why Atlantic salmon are failing to return from the open ocean has long bedeviled scientists and conservationists alike. Since 2002, the Atlantic Salmon Federation has raised more than 2 million dollars in private funding for research on salmon mortality at sea, and has been recognized by NASCO delegates for the large part that it plays in North America’s contribution to this vital research. NASCO will now be involved with a major public/private partnership on unraveling this mystery, giving a much-needed international boost to the research being done by individual nations and NGOs such as the Atlantic Salmon Federation.

Those of us who are active in this issue sometimes refer to NASCO as the “United Nations” of wild Atlantic salmon. NASCO may well prove to be the international component that will ultimately play a part in determining the survival or extinction of the United States’ wild Atlantic salmon.

Bill Taylor is president and CEO of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, an international conservation organization based in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada. ASF has offices in Brunswick, Maine and New York City.