The Rivers Trust launch the State of Our Rivers Report 2026, with a Deep Dive on wild Atlantic salmon

The Rivers Trust has launched their largest State of Our Rivers Report to date, with information about river health, pollution, nature-based solutions, access, bathing waters, barriers and wildlife, including a deep dive on wild Atlantic salmon. Datasets available vary, but the Report covers the UK and Ireland, and contains lots of fantastic interactive maps.

The Rivers Trust have analysed the latest data and conclude:

• It's clear that, when it comes to the health of our rivers overall, nothing has changed since their last report in 2024. 

• When we look locally, we can see that action for rivers makes a big difference - it's just not happening on an urgent or ambitious scale enough yet to move the needle at a national level:

- 0% of England’s almost 4,000 river stretches in England are in good or high overall status.

- 23% are classed in either poor or bad overall status. 

- Just 15% of river stretches manage to achieve good or high ecological status, meaning 85% fall below 'good' ecological standards.  

- 100% of England’s river stretches fail to meet good chemical standards. 

- In Scotland, over half of river stretches fail to meet good ecological status – just 46% are classed as good or higher – and 45% reach good or high overall status 

- In Wales, nearly 60% of river stretches fail to reach good or high ecological status, 39% of river stretches achieve good overall status, and 13% are either poor or bad.

- In Ireland, 52% of river stretches failed to achieve good or high ecological status, with no overall status data shared.  

- In Northern Ireland, 71% of river stretches fail to achieve good or high ecological status, and no rivers are classified as achieving good or high overall status.

Climate change is making a bad situation even worse. It exacerbates the impacts of the pressures faced by our rivers, and leaves them even less resilient or able handle continued and future problems - like pollution, abstraction, and weather extremes.

On wild Atlantic salmon, the report highlights:

• In Scotland, the 2025 salmon fishing season recorded the second-lowest total number of salmon caught, by any method, since records began in 1952.

• In Ireland and Northern Ireland, only about 3,500 returning salmon were recorded in four of the premier salmon fishing rivers (Finn, Roe, Faughan, and Mourne) in 2025 - 63% lower than the rivers' five-year average.

• For two consecutive years, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s annual counting and tagging of juvenile wild Atlantic salmon on the River Frome in Dorset has shown record low levels – just 4,593 parr in 2024, and 3,226 parr in 2025.

• In Ireland, the DNA of escaped farmed salmon has been identified in a third of wild salmon tested. This genetic intrusion has the potential to weaken existing wild populations and risk their survival by further reducing their resilience.

• Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust research shows the survival of wild Atlantic salmon at sea has declined dramatically. In recent years, on average, only 3% of fish leaving the river have returned to spawn, and this figure has regularly dropped below 1%.

• According to the recently released 2025 stock assessment data, every principal salmon river monitored in Wales has been classified as “at risk”, and just three in England achieve “not at risk” or “probably not at risk” as populations of the species continue to decline.

It also outlines key problems including:

• Invasive Pacific salmon are reaching our rivers and threatening native Atlantic salmon stocks. 

• Climate change is reducing summer flows, and making leaping salmon a rarer or later sight.

• Hotter, drier summers are warming waters to temperatures at which salmon don’t survive.

And key solutions including:

• Adding shade in the form of trees and vegetation (as river buffers) can keep in-water temperatures cooler and intercept soil and pollution run-off.

• Restoration work & barrier removal, such as Project Deveron, can see adult salmon return.

• eDNA sampling and observations at salmon spawning locations can help us better understand the distribution of invasive Pacific salmon.

The Missing Salmon Alliance is a collaboration between the Atlantic Salmon Trust, The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, The Angling Trust, Fisheries Management Scotland, FishLegal, Afonydd Cymru, and The Rivers Trust, with the aim of halting and reversing the decline in Atlantic Salmon.

For further information, please see the Report here and the Deep Dive on Atlantic salmon here.