“Dear Mark,
I want to find a way of thanking your fishing customers direct for their generous donations, which has enabled you to send a cheque for £8,348.50 to support the work of AST.
One of the advantages of being a small charity is that our overheads are reasonably low, which ensures that nearly all donations, such as this one, go straight to projects to conserve wild Atlantic salmon and sea trout. This money from people who fish our salmon rivers will I hope contribute towards bringing more salmon and sea trout back home in the future.
At present our top priority is to find out what is happening to smolts of both species as they swim down the final stretch of their home river into the estuary, and then onto their coastal migration routes. By tracking outgoing smolts and finding out where the risks to survival are greatest, we can start to take action to protect salmon and sea trout migrations at sea.
There is also evidence that there is an accidental ‘by-catch’ of salmon taking place in the seas around Northern Europe, which is why we are now working closely with pelagic commercial fishermen to define that risk and, if it proves to be a serious problem, to do something about it.
We will be reporting regularly in our newsletters, on the AST website and Facebook Pages on both these projects, tracking and by-catch, as well as others, which have the potential to directly influence numbers of wild fish returning to our rivers.
The money from Fishpal’s fishing customers will help us achieve that, so a big thank you to all concerned, for their generosity and support. Tight lines and a great fishing new year to all!
Tony Andrews”
