Weir needs extra fish pass costing up to £1 million, expert says

The autumn salmon leap at the weir is a popular spectacle, but fish have been seen landing hard on the concrete and struggling to find the current pass, wasting valuable energy for spawning season.

With the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow focusing minds on environmental issues, the Environment Agency's Chris Bainger said he is "extremely concerned" about the "crisis" of low numbers of salmon returning to our waters, and that extreme floods and water temperature issues caused by climate change are also a big problem.

And in Shrewsbury, he believes a second pass must be installed to help fish migrate. Currently there is a pass on the Underdale side of the river, and a defunct one on the Castlefields side which has been deemed not safe for fish to use.

"What I would like to see happen in Shrewsbury is for a second fish pass to be built," he said. "We believe something can be done for between £250,000 to £1 million.

"I don't think getting rid of the weir would ever be an option for Shrewsbury. The current fish pass is very effective for all species when they can find it.

"Those fish are very near to spawning and they are using up a lot of energy which they need when they are being held up at the weir. Delay is not good for them and we want to reduce that."

He added: "It's all about finding the partners and the funding. We want to work with the Severn Rivers Trust, Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Shrewsbury and Shropshire councils and Severn Trent Water. Severn Trent do provide money for making improvements to the river. We've started some of the work in terms of gathering information on river levels. If we do it we need to make sure it is right.

"Salmon jumping at the weir is a fairly new phenomenon. Until the mid 2000s we didn't see it."

Chris believes the numbers of salmon migrating along the River Severn have been "modest" this year, going off numbers caught and released by anglers.

Rivers and pollution have been a hot topic in the county and nationally recently after MPs were furiously criticised over the way most of them voted on the issue of how to stop sewage being allowed to overflow into the Severn. Shropshire and Mid Wales MPs hit back, with Montgomeryshire MP Craig Williams claiming critics were spreading "disinformation".

Chris said: "It isn't good news. There are problems. We need to raise the profile that we all have a responsibility and we all need to do our part.

"It is important to say that our rivers do still have salmon, and that is a good indicator of the health of the river and the water quality."