Report of NASCO Annual meeting – 2-6 June 2025

Introduction

NASCO is an inter-governmental organization formed by a treaty in 1983. It is the only inter-governmental organization with regulatory competency for wild Atlantic salmon fisheries, and it is the pre-eminent convener of the wild Atlantic salmon community throughout the North Atlantic Ocean, including governments, Indigenous Peoples, the non-governmental organizations, fishers, environmental organizations and other relevant actors. The Parties to the Convention are Canada, Denmark (in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland), the European Union, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are 39 non-governmental observers and four Indigenous Peoples’ representatives and institutions accredited to the Organization. Ultimately, NASCO purports to reverse the decline of wild Atlantic salmon populations and recover them to healthy and resilient levels.

Review of meeting

The 2025 Annual Meeting was convened at a time when wild Atlantic salmon are in crisis. Some 93 participants joining in- person and 31 joining remotely. The participants included scientists, policy makers and representatives of inter-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and Indigenous Peoples’ representatives and institutions who met to discuss the status of wild Atlantic salmon and to consider management issues (note the intentional wording in italics).

I am not sure I agree with reports that NASCO took significant steps this year in advancing its Ten-Year Strategy and Action Plan, which aims to achieve transformational conservation and management actions for wild Atlantic salmon across the species’ range. Proposals to strengthen the NASCO Strategic goal put forward after considered thinking by our NGO Group were ultimately rejected by the NASCO Council (the parties). Various members of the Council commented that the Strategic Goal does not exist in isolation but should be read in conjunction with NASCO’s Vision and Mission statements and that the intention of the Strategic Goal is to halt and reverse the decline, but it is not clear if that would be possible by 2033, hence “slow the decline”. This lack of ambition, disguised as pragmatism, is disappointing. 

In 2024, the United Kingdom expressed its desire to retain a Special Session on the reporting cycle in 2025 to share the actions carried out by Parties / jurisdictions that have been considered to be a success for wild Atlantic salmon. The other Parties agreed that this would be very useful in planning for the fourth reporting cycle. Council agreed. This third Special Session of the Council was not held in 2025. Since only 3 parties submitted a paper on successes, it does beg the question as to what has been achieved beyond strategic intentions in recent years.

During the Agenda Item on the Effect of Salmon Aquaculture on Wild Atlantic Salmon Populations, the NGO Co-Chair asked why the item had no decision associated with it when the Policy Brief raised significant points on sea lice and introgression as serious threats to the viability of wild Atlantic Salmon. This was fudged by Parties in terms of the need for independence, publication of the findings in journals, and the planned review the relevant Resolutions, Agreements and Guidelines associated with aquaculture.

It is in this context that NGOs made as many representations during the Special Session on stressor analyses as the chair could accommodate. Each party / jurisdiction presented its own analysis of the key stressors to wild Atlantic salmon and their relative impacts and allowed others in the room to challenge and verify this work. Climate change, barriers to migration, predation, pollution and aquaculture impacts featured repeatedly across the North Atlantic. NGOs all pointed to the lack of ambition underpinning these analyses whilst acknowledging that the approach to identifying and tackling the top 3 stressors did at least bring focus as long as it did not signal regression from ongoing and planned actions and interventions. We stressed that it should stimulate new and fresh actions with strong bids for adequate funding to implement them.

Key amongst our concerns was the lack of specific actions to identify causes of and tackle marine mortality. In the background the NGO Group had discussed the need to have salmon recognised as a marine fish. We felt that governance and therefore management approaches resulted in a focus in freshwater with a “deal with the things you can do something about” ethos (the EU Habitats Directive only protects Atlantic salmon freshwater habitats). While we welcomed the Council agreement to request ICES to make a marine by catch call for salmon, we strongly suggested that parties and jurisdictions needed to think harder about influencing policy and practice for the marine environment that could yield data and thus inform solutions to marine mortality. 

Ultimately, Council agreed the basis of the fourth reporting cycle to be:

•          the use of metrics called ‘Performance Indicators’ (PIs), to be reported annually, starting in 2027, by each Party / jurisdiction under NASCO’s three themes; and 

•          an individual ‘Conservation Commitments Report’ developed by each Party / jurisdiction, to be reported on annually, starting in 2027, and reviewed biennially, starting in 2028, consisting of their three top-priority (unless otherwise justified) stressors as identified in their stressor analysis and a minimum of one and maximum of three actions per stressor to address those stressors.

Council agreed that:

•          each action associated with each stressor proposed in the Conservation Commitments Reports requires a starting point, in order to measure its progress; and 

•          each stressor proposed in the Conservation Commitments Reports also requires a starting point, in order to measure its progress.

Other matters agreed over the 4 days of Council 

  • To adopt the Generic Terms of Reference for the Working Groups to update, and consolidate as appropriate, NASCO’s Resolutions, Agreements and Guidelines, incorporating climate change and other factors as key elements of the review with the following priority order: habitat: commence 2025; plan to complete 2026; aquaculture and disease: commence 2026; plan to complete 2027; and fisheries commence 2027; plan to complete 2028. I have been nominated by my NGO Group colleagues for the habitat group.
  • The launch of the new Wild Atlantic Salmon Atlas, an interactive, online map that provides information on the status of Atlantic salmon in more than 2,000 rivers across the North Atlantic. This includes information on the main factors impacting the Atlantic salmon in each jurisdiction with the clear message– salmon are in trouble and everyone has a role to play in reversing their population decline.
  • New guidelines on stock rebuilding and gene banking – to help the salmon community understand when each technique is appropriate and how to maximise its effectiveness.
  • NASCO’s North-East Atlantic Commission confirmed the continuation of no fishing for Atlantic salmon in the waters around the Faroe Islands.
  • Members of NASCO’s West Greenland Commission acknowledged the excellent progress and commitment made by the Government of Denmark (in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland) to improve management of the fishery. A new regulatory measure for the West Greenland fishery will be negotiated at the 2026 Annual Meeting.

Footnote

Inevitably there is not unanimity amongst NGO groups at NASCO. Conversations on changing the context for dialogue from fishing to the fish, and on recognising that strategy must now come from a presumption that no fish should be intentionally killed, were strained. Stocking remains a vexed topic. Nonetheless, we did, perhaps more than ever, get a focus on ambition and action and underscored our role, rehearsed by the NASCO acting president and secretary, to hold the parties to account. The strong observer presence – 22 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and four Indigenous People’s representatives and institutions (IPRIs) represented at this year’s Annual Meeting – aim to do so.

Marcus McAuley

IFM Policy Lead