IN DECEMBER last year the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) revised its red list of endangered species and reclassified Atlantic salmon to a status of ‘near threatened’. British salmon were rated more seriously as ‘endangered’. There should have been one more reclassification, however. Had British chalkstream salmon been singled out, they would surely have been labelled ‘critically endangered’. Chalkstream salmon are England’s white rhino: approaching extinction after two million years of residence. Last year only 287 adult salmon ascended the River Itchen to spawn, and in 2022 only 133 – far fewer than the lowest number deemed necessary for the survival of the species in that stream.
In 2018 Dr Jamie Stevens and a team of scientists from Exeter University proved that chalkstream salmon are genetically unique. Like the chalkstreams they breed in, they are therefore globally unique. On ourwatch we are losing one of Britain’s oldest native animals. Chalkstreams will still be around in 50 years but their wonderful native salmon may not. To understand why this would be an irreversible catastrophe, we need to