The Minister of Environment in Norway ruled out a ban on the cultivation of open fish in the sea, despite the recognition that the wild salmon in North Atlantic is subject to “existential threat”.
With annual exports of 1.2 million tons, Norway is the largest producer of a farm salmon In the world. But wild salmon population has decreased from more than a million in The early eighties to about 500,000 today.
While the completion of the wild population is largely due to the climate crisis, the salmon industry in the country, which escaped from cultivated fish and A significant rise in sea lice Parasites, helped reduce numbers to the lowest historical level, which led to Close 33 rivers for salmon last summer.
Andreas Bellland Eriksen, Minister of Climate and Environment, said his job “does not stop or close the human activity itself” but rather stimulating industrial production while reducing pollution to a “acceptable level”.
“This is mainly an existential threat against the wild Atlantic salmon, and if we ignore that I do not think we will be able to do the measures we have to do,” said a meeting on the Norwegian salmon rivers in the Salmon Alliance Conference in London last week.
Eriksen said: “If you looked at the wild salmon, the year 2024 was exceptionally bad, but it was not alone because the worst two other years were in 2023 and 2021,” Ericen said.
“So it is really part of the direction and symbolizes something. For me, what symbolizes it is that the influence of everything we do is to become more than nature, and our shares can really deal with it.”
But despite this recognition, the Guardian Minister later told that he would not seek to stop the cultivation of open sea.
He said: “If you look at the aquaculture industry, it produces food, and this is really important for people all over the world, and the goal is to be able to produce this food in a sustainable way in the future.”
“Therefore, my main problem is not with the production itself, it is with pollution and the effect of pollution on the environment. This is what we need to address.”
“This is also the reason that we need to work for a regulatory system that stimulates production, but within the levels of pollution that does not harm the wild Atlantic stocks.”
He said he was not yet known whether the Norwegian Salmon River would be in sufficient health to reopen the fishing season for this year, but they will have a better idea by spring.
Instead of reducing the cultivation of open sea in the network, although it urged it to do so by activists, the minister said that instead he intends to search for an “acceptable level” of pollution for wild salmon residents.
“There are levels of pollution that can address the environment that can be within the limits that the wild Atlantic salmon can deal with also. So finding this level is really what we need to move forward. For some areas that may be zero.”
