Hello Ida Ahlbeck Bergendahl and Tom Staveley. You both recently attended the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation’s (NASCO) annual meeting in Aviemore, Scotland, where the focus was, of course, on wild Atlantic salmon.
What is NASCO?
Ida: It is an intergovernmental organisation whose long-term vision is to reverse the negative trend for wild Atlantic salmon and ensure that populations recover to healthy and resilient levels across their range. Sweden actively contributes to NASCO’s work, including through the involvement of experts from SLU Aqua.
What are your roles within NASCO?
Tom: Ida and I are official delegates for Sweden and the EU, and we serve as scientific advisors to the EU party within NASCO, as well as the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM) who are also present. We therefore provide scientific advice when needed. However, our most significant contribution takes place within the ICES working group on Atlantic salmon, which covers salmon stocks on the west coast, not Baltic salmon. There, we represent Sweden and work with stock assessments and analyses of Atlantic salmon populations.
SLU Aqua has been involved in two key initiatives highlighted at this year’s NASCO meeting. One of them is the development of the NASCO Wild Atlantic Salmon Atlas - what is that?
Tom: It is an interactive online map that shows the status of Atlantic salmon in more than 2,000 rivers across the North Atlantic. The atlas is intended to make knowledge about salmon stocks more accessible to decision-makers, researchers, and the public.
The second initiative is the work on new national conservation commitments aimed at preserving wild salmon stocks and reversing their decline. How have you contributed here?
Ida: During the meeting, 19 of NASCO’s member countries, including Sweden, presented their national commitments. We have contributed to developing the analyses and documentation that form the basis for the measures and their continued follow-up. What these measures have in common is that they are designed to be urgent, transformative and on a scale to make a difference. Translating scientific results into concrete conservation actions for salmon is crucial if we are to succeed in reversing the species’ decline.
What are the biggest threats to wild Atlantic salmon today?
Ida: In 2025, NASCO’s member countries conducted national analyses to identify which factors most affect their salmon stocks. Climate change, migration barriers, predation, pollution, and impacts from aquaculture have been identified as some of the most significant pressures on wild Atlantic salmon in the North Atlantic. These analyses now form the basis for the new national conservation commitments.
* The final measures will be published in November 2026, and the results will be evaluated for the first time at NASCO’s annual meeting in 2028.
NASCO is an intergovernmental organisation established by an international convention in 1983 and headquartered in Edinburgh. It is the only intergovernmental body with regulatory responsibility for fisheries targeting wild Atlantic salmon and serves as the key platform for cooperation among governments, scientists, indigenous organisations, environmental NGOs, and other stakeholders in the North Atlantic.
The member parties are Canada, Denmark (in respect of the Faroe Islands and Greenland), the EU, Iceland, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
SLU Aqua also participates in NASCO’s working group on pink salmon, where researchers and managers from across the North Atlantic meet to discuss research, management issues, and future developments related to this invasive species.
Ida Ahlbeck Bergendahl, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Analyst
Department of Aquatic Resources, Institute of Freshwater Research, SLU
ida.ahlbeck.bergendahl@slu.se, +46(0)10-478 42 50
Tom Staveley, Researcher
Department of Aquatic Resources, Institute of Freshwater Research, SLU
tom.staveley@slu.se, +46(0)10-478 42 52