Scotland’s latest assessment of wild Atlantic salmon shows a ten-year deterioration across much of the country. For the 2017 angling season, 61 of Scotland’s assessed salmon stocks were classed as being in good conservation status. For 2027, only 22 are proposed to remain in that category. Over the same period, the number classed as poor has risen from 75 to 123. The surviving strength is increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of larger east-coast rivers.
The Scottish Government assesses 173 wild Atlantic salmon stocks each year. In most cases, a stock corresponds to a single river, though some assessment areas combine several rivers or cover a Special Area of Conservation. The latest figures, published in August for the proposed 2027 angling season, place 123 of those 173 stocks in poor conservation status, 28 in moderate status and 22 in good status.
The pattern is markedly different from a decade ago. In 2017, 61 stocks were classed as good, 37 as moderate and 75 as poor. By 2022, the number of good stocks had fallen to 37. It fell again to 29 in 2023, recovered slightly to 32 in 2024 and 31 in 2025, then stood at 32 for 2026. The proposed 2027 assessment reduces that figure to 22.
The poor category has moved in the opposite direction. From 75 stocks in 2017, it rose to 101 in 2022, 113 in 2023, 112 in 2024, 118 in 2025 and 115 in 2026. The proposed figure for 2027 is 123.
The annual conservation categories are not descriptions of whether salmon are present or absent. They measure the probability that a stock will meet an internationally agreed conservation limit over a five-year period. A stock is rated good where the probability is at least 80 per cent. Moderate covers probabilities between 60 and 80 per cent. Poor means the probability is below 60 per cent.
The conservation limit is intended to represent the number of spawning fish required to sustain the stock. A river placed in the poor category is therefore not necessarily empty of salmon. It is a river or assessment area in which the evidence indicates insufficient confidence that enough fish are returning and surviving to maintain the stock at the required level.
The national picture is not evenly distributed
The most unusual feature of the latest assessment appears when the number of stocks is compared with the number of fish.
Only 13 per cent of Scotland’s assessed salmon stocks are proposed to be in good conservation status for 2027. Yet those stocks are estimated to contain about 73 per cent of all Scottish salmon.
The reason is geographical. Several of Scotland’s larger east-coast rivers continue to support much larger salmon populations than many of the smaller rivers around the west coast, islands and other parts of the country. A relatively small number of large stocks therefore account for most of the national population.
The result is a salmon population that can appear stronger when measured by individual fish than when measured by the number of rivers capable of meeting their conservation limits.
That concentration also changes the character of national resilience. A country with many healthy rivers distributes ecological strength across different catchments. A country in which most fish are concentrated within a smaller group of large rivers depends increasingly upon the performance of those systems.
The decline is visible even inside stocks that remain classified as good
The conservation categories also conceal another trend. Between 2011 and 2025, Scottish Government scientists found significant and consistent declines in estimated salmon numbers in 76 stocks.
Those declines occurred across all three conservation categories. Some rivers still classified as good are therefore declining from a relatively stronger starting position.
Among another 70 stocks where the statistical analysis did not detect a significant, consistent decline, 57 nevertheless contained fewer salmon in 2025 than in 2011. A further 27 stocks showed no consistent pattern over the period.
The annual conservation grade and the direction of travel therefore measure different things. A river can remain above its conservation threshold while carrying fewer fish than it did previously. Another can remain in poor condition without showing a further statistically consistent decline because its population has already fallen to a low level or varies substantially between years.
The long-term national decline is larger than the ten-year grading series
Scotland’s salmon records extend much farther back than the current conservation-status system.
Estimates of adult salmon returning to Scottish coastal waters begin in the early 1970s. At that time, around one million salmon were estimated to return to Scotland in a year. In recent years, that estimate has fallen to around 300,000.
The decline in returning fish did not initially produce an equivalent fall in the number surviving to spawn. Fisheries management changed substantially over the same period. Commercial exploitation was reduced, coastal net fisheries were closed to salmon, and catch-and-release became increasingly common among rod fisheries.
In the early 1970s, more than 400,000 salmon could be removed annually by net and rod fisheries. By the early 2020s, removals had fallen to a few thousand. In 2025, 98 per cent of salmon caught by rod were released, and no salmon were taken by coastal net fisheries.
That reduction in deliberate killing allowed a larger proportion of returning fish to reach spawning grounds even while the total number arriving at Scotland’s coast was falling. Estimated spawning numbers rose for several decades and reached a high point of around 670,000 in 2010.
Since then, spawning numbers have fallen as well. The Scottish Government’s latest estimate places them at around 250,000 in recent years.
The 2025 salmon catch was the lowest ever recorded
The fishery statistics for 2025 provide another measure of the same decline.
Scottish rivers recorded 28,020 salmon caught by rod in 2025, the lowest figure since national records began in 1952. The total was 68 per cent of the average for the preceding five years.
Rod fishing effort also declined, with 192,859 reported rod days compared with 203,199 in 2024. Lower fishing effort can reduce catches, so catch totals cannot be treated as a direct count of the salmon population. The government nevertheless states that the 2025 results are consistent with the wider decline in wild salmon returning to Scotland.
The reported rod catch had exceeded 111,000 salmon as recently as 2010.
Scotland has progressively removed fishing pressure
Government policy has increasingly restricted the killing of wild salmon as stock condition has deteriorated.
The Conservation of Salmon (Scotland) Regulations introduced the current annual stock-assessment system in 2016. Poor-status rivers are subject to mandatory catch-and-release, meaning salmon can still be fished for but cannot legally be retained.
Spring salmon receive additional national protection because their numbers have fallen particularly sharply. It is illegal to retain salmon caught before 1 April.
The closure of coastal net fisheries and widespread voluntary and statutory catch-and-release have greatly reduced direct exploitation. Those measures have altered one pressure Scotland can control directly.
The continued decline after that reduction is one reason current salmon policy extends far beyond fishing regulation.
Much of a salmon’s life occurs beyond Scotland’s rivers
Atlantic salmon begin life in freshwater, migrate to sea as juveniles, spend part of their adult growth phase in the North Atlantic and then return to freshwater to spawn, usually in the river from which they originated.
Survival at sea has deteriorated across the North Atlantic. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea reports that adult return rates have declined since the late 1980s and are now at historically low levels for many stocks, including after large reductions in marine fisheries.
Scottish Government analysis attributes part of the long-term decline to changes in ocean conditions associated with climate change. Changes in sea temperature can alter marine food webs, prey availability, growth rates and the energetic cost of survival.
The Scottish decline therefore forms part of a wider North Atlantic pattern rather than an isolated national event. Estimates across the North Atlantic show adult returns falling from about five million salmon in the early 1970s to fewer than 1.5 million in recent years.
That does not make local Scottish conditions irrelevant. Salmon must survive both marine and freshwater phases of their life cycle. A fish weakened by conditions at sea still has to enter a river, negotiate barriers, reach spawning habitat and produce juveniles capable of surviving their own migration back to the ocean.
Scottish rivers contain their own pressures
The Scottish Wild Salmon Strategy identifies a long list of freshwater and coastal pressures. These include water temperature, altered river flows, barriers to migration, habitat degradation, pollution, predation, disease, parasites, invasive species, marine development and interactions with aquaculture.
Many of these pressures overlap.
High water temperatures can increase physiological stress. During the warm summer of 2018, around 70 per cent of Scottish rivers experienced temperatures capable of stressing salmon. Loss of riverside woodland can remove shade and increase local temperatures, while changes in rainfall can alter flows during migration and spawning.
Dams, weirs, bridge structures and culverts can obstruct or delay migration. Scotland’s salmon implementation plan identified 84 active barriers, 94 historic barriers and another 66 barriers outside the principal licensing system for review or action. Some barriers are associated with hydroelectric generation, public water supply, distilleries, transport infrastructure and older industrial works.
The government has also identified water quality as a pressure. Agricultural runoff, forestry practices, sewage discharges and other forms of pollution can affect oxygen levels and habitat condition in rivers where salmon spawn and juveniles develop.
Scotland has been trying to rebuild freshwater habitat
The Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan, published in 2023 and running to 2028, brings together actions across government agencies, fisheries organisations, land managers and environmental bodies.
Work includes removing or easing barriers, restoring river habitats, planting riverside trees for shade, improving water quality, monitoring disease, controlling invasive species and improving scientific data.
By 2024, government reported that eight barriers had been eased for fish passage, more than 100 were under assessment and 69 were progressing towards further action. Peatland restoration and riverside woodland programmes were also being used partly to improve catchment condition.
The Nature Restoration Fund has committed at least £65 million across wider biodiversity restoration, with river and fisheries organisations among the recipients of project funding.
The latest salmon classifications show that those interventions are operating against a continuing national and international decline.
Some rivers are changing category faster than others
The proposed 2027 assessment does not simply move the national totals.
Twenty-one stocks are proposed to move into a worse conservation category compared with 2026. Three are proposed to improve.
That annual movement reflects a system based on rolling evidence rather than a permanent designation. Stocks can shift between good, moderate and poor as new data on returning adults, catches, fish counters and biological samples enter the assessment.
The government uses rod-catch information, fish counters and samples of salmon scales to estimate how many adults are returning, how large and old they are, and how many are likely to survive to spawn. Those estimates are then compared with the conservation limit for each stock.
The proposed classifications were subject to statutory consultation during August and early September. Final regulations will determine where salmon can legally be retained during the 2027 season.
A smaller number of large rivers now carries most of Scotland’s salmon
The national figures produce a striking geography.
Seventy-one per cent of assessed stocks are proposed to be classed as poor. Yet most individual salmon remain within the much smaller good-status group.
The larger east-coast river systems account for much of that remaining abundance. Their size, tributary networks and habitat allow them to sustain populations far larger than many smaller coastal and island rivers.
The national population therefore depends increasingly upon a relatively limited number of strong catchments at the same time as declines are being recorded across rivers in all conservation categories.
Scotland has already removed most legal harvesting pressure from its weakest stocks. Commercial coastal salmon fishing has ended. Catch-and-release rates are close to universal. Poor-status rivers cannot retain salmon at all.
Those measures have reduced the number of fish killed by fisheries to a fraction of historic levels.
The 2027 assessment shows what has happened while those protections have been increasing. In the first year of the present grading system, 61 stocks met the threshold for good conservation status. Ten years later, the proposed number is 22.
Sources
The Status of Salmon in Scotland: 2026
Scottish Government — 5 August 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/status-of-salmon-in-scotland/
Conservation Status of Individual Salmon Stocks
Scottish Government — 5 August 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/status-of-salmon-in-scotland/pages/conservation-status-of-individual-salmon-stocks/
Decline in Adult Salmon Numbers
Scottish Government — 5 August 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/status-of-salmon-in-scotland/pages/decline-in-adult-salmon-numbers/
Salmon Fishing: Proposed Conservation Statuses for 2027 Season
Scottish Government — 5 August 2026; consultation closed 5 September 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/salmon-fishing-proposed-conservation-status-for-2027-season/
Conservation of Wild Salmon
Scottish Government — accessed September 2026
https://www.gov.scot/policies/salmon-and-recreational-fisheries/conservation/
Scottish Salmon and Sea Trout Fishery Statistics Updated for 2025 Season
Scottish Government — 29 April 2026
https://www.gov.scot/news/scottish-salmon-and-sea-trout-fishery-statistics-updated-for-2025-season/
Scottish Wild Salmon Strategy
Scottish Government — 14 January 2022
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-wild-salmon-strategy/
Wild Salmon Strategy: Implementation Plan 2023 to 2028
Scottish Government — 1 February 2023
https://www.gov.scot/publications/wild-salmon-strategy-implementation-plan-2023-2028/
Wild Salmon Strategy Implementation Plan: Annual Progress Report 2024
Scottish Government — 30 May 2025
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-wild-salmon-strategy-implementation-plan-annual-progress-report-2024/
Scotland’s Changing Nature — Atlantic Salmon
NatureScot — 2025
https://www.nature.scot/doc/scotlands-changing-nature-atlantic-salmon
Working Group on North Atlantic Salmon
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea — accessed September 2026
https://www.ices.dk/community/groups/Pages/WGNAS.aspx
