Gillies march on Holyrood

Gillies and river workers joined conservation groups, anglers and animal welfare organisations outside the Scottish Parliament on 11 March to call for an urgent moratorium on new salmon farms.

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association’s Fishing Group was among those attending the demonstration, at which protesters presented first minister John Swinney with a wooden carving of a wild salmon and urged him to protect wild populations from further decline.

Kenneth Stephen, speaking on behalf of the SGA Fishing Group, said fish farming was “one of a litany of pressures” facing wild salmon, and called for accelerated moves towards closed containment systems and ultimately for salmon farms to move onshore.

But he said the crisis was already costing livelihoods. Gillie numbers on the Dee have fallen from 45 to 22 in recent years, he said – a trend he described as “alarming”.

“That is hurting families and it’s hurting conservation because of the unfunded habitat work gillies undertake daily,” Mr Stephen said. “We need the Scottish Government and the Parliament to act with urgency and bravery to do the things the species and our rural economy requires.”

Scottish Green MSP Ariane Burgess told a Holyrood committee that around 12 million farmed salmon died prematurely in Scotland last year, and challenged rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon over the contradiction between that figure and the Government’s position that no new regulation was needed.

Ms Gougeon said the past year had brought “improvements to the resilience, transparency and sustainability of salmon farming”.