NASF encourages France to restore salmon runs in Normandy

The bigger of the two dams is at Vezins, 20 kms up the Sélune. Some 34 metres (111 ft) high it was built to provide water and hydroelectric power in a three-year building operation completed in 1932. A similar dam was pulled down at Kernansquillec on the Léguer river in Brittany in the 1990s. The second dam that may be demolished was constructed at La Roche-qui-Boit during the First World War. It is only half the height of its upstream counterpart but it is 12 kms nearer the sea and its construction created a complete barrier for salmon seeking to reach the headwaters.

Since 1993, NASF has enjoyed a good relationship with the French authorities in respect of salmon restoration. The French Government supported NASF’s high seas moratorium projects and the campaign in Ireland to end the Irish drift netting that intercepted a great many salmon that would otherwise have returned to their native rivers in France, Spain, Germany, England and Wales.

Normandy and Brittany are the first areas of mainland Europe to receive the remnants of the huge numbers of Atlantic wild salmon that formerly returned to the continent from the salmon’s high seas feeding grounds off Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Isles. This makes the prospect of successfully restoring salmon stocks in Normandy of considerable importance in encouraging growing efforts in countries from Northern Spain to Germany to rebuild low salmon numbers and to recreate the salmon runs of rivers that have lost their stocks.

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