Madam, - The wild salmon faces extinction, stocks having fallen continuously and steeply since the 1970s.
The Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources has both the responsibility and the capacity to take effective measures to curtail the excessive drift netting responsible for killing too many fish before they can spawn.
It is high time that such action replaced waiting for private "buy-out" initiatives dependent on comprehensive voluntary acceptance and precarious financing.
The Department's quota/tagging system enables it to limit the annual catch of wild salmon in line with scientific advice on conservation requirements - a responsibility it has failed to discharge in each of the past four seasons. Commercial quotas have been appointed well in excess of scientific advice. The charge on the taxpayer has yielded no benefit by way of conservation and, because of the four-year life cycle of salmon, the possibility of improving stocks of adult fish has been critically postponed.
With quotas individualised by reference to average catches in recent years, the Department would have reliable and equitable means of financing an incentive to quota-holders to surrender their quotas for cancellation so as to boost the conservation effect. It is well placed to arrange the original financing (proper to be met by borrowing) of measures taken to protect a natural resource. The total cost of the incentive would depend on the relevant number of fish, the level of compensation per fish (say, the average landed price in 2004-5), and the number of years' purchase offered. The annual debt service would be unlikely to exceed €1 million, of which part could be recovered from beneficiaries through increased licence fees and fishery rates. No great financial problem here!
A total ban on commercial fishing for salmon is not yet necessary to save the species, though it would end international criticism of our interception of salmon destined for other countries. This criticism would be allayed by stricter control of fishing in line with scientific advice and also by confining fishing closer to our shores.
Continued disregard of scientific advice must, however, lead inevitably to such a depletion of stocks that, as has happened when other species of Atlantic fish have been threatened, a total ban on fishing has to be imposed for a period, no compensation being payable.
Further procrastination can only hasten the disappearance of a unique national resource. - Yours, etc,
TK WHITAKER, Stillorgan Road, Dublin 4.