Eco-project boost for the River Calder and Atlantic salmon
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Spawning grounds on a River Spey tributary for Atlantic salmon are to be improved thanks to a £192,000 funding boost from Scottish Natural Heritage.
The Spey Catchment Initiative (SCI) is delighted that their project for the River Calder above Newtonmore has received the away from SNH’s Biodiversity Challenge Fund.
The River Spey is renowned throughout the world for its salmon fishing and the Calder is one of its upper tributaries providing precious spawning grounds for the species.
Stocks are widely acknowledged to be in crisis for a multitude of reasons and the Spey Fishery Board has identified the Calder as under-performing in terms of its productivity for salmon and trout.
The BCF grant, with support from the Woodland Trust, will enable an extensive programme of riparian tree-planting throughout the upland glen.
This will provide shade to cool the water temperatures but will also improve the habitat generally and provide long-term benefits for numerous wildlife species, whilst also helping to future-proof the Calder catchment from the ravages of climate change.
The SCI has also been working closely with Glenbanchor Estates and Cluny Estate to develop a project which will see large wood structures placed within the upper sections of the river.
These will provide sanctuary for juvenile fish, as well as helping to slow the flow of this fast-flowing river and thereby providing some natural flood alleviation for Newtonmore and the Spey catchment below.
Together with the extensive tree-planting from the BCF grant, these projects will provide landscape-scale changes to boost the ecology of the whole area.
Spey Fishery Board Director and SCI partner, Roger Knight, said: “We are particularly grateful to SNH for supporting this project with a substantial grant.
"Often we can only tackle parts of a river, or problems at specific locations but this grant will enable the SCI to tackle the River Calder catchment at a landscape scale.
"It will be the biggest project so far for the initiative, benefitting not just the fish populations there but the ecology and biodiversity of the wider environment whilst also providing some flood risk alleviation benefits for the Spey catchment down below.
"We very much look forward to getting started on it in August.”
SCI Project Officer Penny Lawson commented: “This is a tremendous boost for the environment around the Calder.
"Anything that can be done to improve the young salmon population there is positive, but this project will bring long-term benefits to many other species of wildlife too and help future-proof the area against the onset of climate change.
"It will be a significant enhancement for biodiversity and the wider environment and is particularly good news in these otherwise troubled times.”
The Spey Catchment Initiative is a public and private partnership organisation, established in 2010 to take forward key actions to care for the famous river and its catchment area.
The Spey Fishery Board is the statutory body responsible for the protection, preservation and development of salmon and sea trout fisheries within the Spey district, including the associated coastline.
It is empowered to act for the conservation, protection and enhancement of Atlantic salmon and sea trout stocks and their fisheries.
The River Spey is world-famous for its salmon fishing, with anglers travelling from afar to fish the river.
Angling on the Spey generates in excess of £15 million per year for the local economy and sustains over 350 full-time-equivalent jobs.
