Sir, - Your Editorial of July 18th appeared as the debate concerning salmon stocks continued to rage. However rage is a very unproductive emotion. What is needed now is action - action to conserve salmon stocks and to engage in a systematic programme that will ensure the survival of the wild Atlantic salmon. Successive governments have tinkered with policies, tweaked fish conservation programmes here and there, yet the fish continue to decline.
There is now an urgent need to implement strict protection measures. Chief among the problems facing the fish is poor organisational structures for the management of inland fisheries; the problem with water quality and of water pollution and the number of people who fish illegally for salmon. Most significantly there is the legalisation of monofilament netting for drift netting for salmon at sea.
There is incontrovertible evidence that 70 per cent of salmon are caught by drift net fishermen. The Government must put in place a set-aside package to offer to netsmen in order to protect the species. Neither Ireland nor Britain have done anything to halt the catch by drift-netting. Unlike the Faeroes, Norway, Iceland and Greenland which have put in place conservation measures to protect the salmon close to their feeding grounds.
The pain of conservation measure must be spread too, across the angling sector. Catch and release has been mooted but is not yet in force and I note that tagging measures will not now be implemented until 2001.
The time has come for the Minister, Mr Fahey, to grasp the seriousness of the decline in Atlantic wild salmon and to put in place a strategy to preserve the remaining stocks of wild salmon before greed and mismanagement reduce further the number of salmon returning to our Irish rivers. - Yours, etc.,
Cllr Mary White, Green Party Spokesperson on the Environment, Borris, Co Carlow.