Coul Fishings for lucky anglers as River Conon beat raffle boosts coffers of Missing Salmon Alliance conservation drive
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EIGHT lucky anglers will enjoy prime time on a popular Ross-shire beat as part of an initiative to conserve salmon.
Some £2100 has been raised by Coul Fishings on the River Conon in support of the Missing Salmon Alliance (MSA), a group of Britain’s leading conservation organisations focused on salmon.
A raffle ticket ballot offered access to the four-rod beat.
The MSA advocates for the protection of freshwater habitats, the improvement of water quantity and quality, and the reduction of losses of salmon in rivers, coastal waters and the open ocean. Funds raised go towards scientific research, lobbying for change and direct steps to supporting the health of wild Atlantic salmon.
The MSA has welcomed the publication of the Scottish Wild Salmon Strategy which recognises the urgency of the situation and the need for coordinated action.
John Macaskill, head ghillie at Coul Fishings, said: “I am extremely grateful to beat proprietor David Flux for allowing one of the best weeks of the season to be available to local anglers on a raffle ticket-style basis, while raising money for an extremely worthwhile cause at the same time. This has been a collective effort from everyone who has purchased a ticket and I thank every one of them for their continued support.
“To continue being proactive we have to fully support organisations like the Missing Salmon Alliance. This helps enable them to carry out their hugely important work and projects to help achieve the outcome that collectively we all want, precious Atlantic Salmon to be swimming our rivers for generations to come.
“In today’s society, to make any positive changes to the circumstances we currently find ourselves in we have to base all our opinions and sometimes opinions that may be glaringly obvious to us on the river, on science and evidence gathered over time.
“To make changes on any political or government level we have to have the full evidence documented to support our argument, whether this be determining the survival percentage of smolts leaving our rivers or to identifying individual predators that are causing mortalities with juvenile or adult salmon in marine/coastal or freshwater areas, fish farming or even climate change. This will help strengthen our case to be able to grant licences to deal with these issues accordingly. Without these organisations and their tremendous work, Atlantic Salmon will not have a future.”
In 2019, a group of Britain’s leading conservation-focused organisations formed the Missing Salmon Alliance. Their combined expertise has continued to drive action to save wild Atlantic salmon from the brink of extinction.
The member organisations are the Atlantic Salmon Trust, the Game Wildlife Conservation Trust, the Angling Trust with Fish Legal, Fisheries Management Scotland, and the Rivers Trust.
