NEWS & INFORMATION

Salmon Back in the even longer until fishing for commercial species in the Elbe will reflect the overall uses might be possible again. A stable rate state of this ecosystem. Elbe of reproduction without the continuing addition of external fryi s one of the prereq- Address correspondence to Nicola Nicola C.Ostertag uisites. Furthermore, the reasons which Ostertag, Neubertstr. 25,01307 , have led to the extinction of the Atlantic ; (fax)++49-351-442571& Once the Elbe and its tributaries were salmon in the area in the first place have to (e-mail) [email protected] teeming with fish. Among them, salmon be addressed, i.e. construction which ob- used to be a popular as well as regular structs the water course, and pollution. catch. Due to the construction of dams and decreasing water quality, the salmon popu- Only if dams allow for a proper pass- lation diminished rapidly from the mid through for migrating fish do these crea- 19th century onward. The last catch of tures have a fair chance to survive. The salmon was registered in 1947. Dam near has re- cently been furnished with a new fish lad- The Elbe takes its origin in the Giant der which facilitates the passage along a Mountains in the and flows major obstacle close to the estuary of the through eastern and Elbe. A number of additional fish ladders before it empties into the . With are being planned. two thirds of its entire length of 1165 km lo- cated in Germany, the Elbe is the country's second largest river. Water quality in the Elbe was low in 1947 and has deteriorated further during the The fall of the and reunifica- forty years since. The chemical and pulp tion of Germany have made possible coop- and paper industries as well as intensive eration in environmental issues on a new agriculture of the former German Demo- scale. In a concerted effort, all riparian Ger- cratic Republic were prominent sources of man Lander (federal states) on the Elbe surface water pollution. Since the political have formed a working group for the man- changes in 1989, legislation has been agement of fishing. One of their projects is adopted that introduces state-of-the-art the reintroduction of the Atlantic salmon technology and new threshold values for (Salmo salar) into the river and its tributar- pollutants. Factories have been closed ies. Recently, the Czech Republic also down and sewage purification plants have joined the initiative. been built. While such measures have led to significant improvements in water quality, In April 1995 the first fry of Atlantic salmon the concentration of pollutants in the Elbe collected from the Shannon and Delphi still ranges way above those of other fluvial river in Ireland was released into a tributary systems in Germany, e.g. the River in the Free State of , a federal state along which the most important players of on the territory of the former German the German chemical industry are located. Democratic Republic. This procedure has On the other hand, in the territory of the since been repeated on an annual basis. A former German Democratic Republic, the year later the first smolts migrated into the Elbe has not been forced into an artificial Elbe. In October 1998 the first spawn was river bed to improve navigability to the found in the initial tributary. By the end of same extent to which this has been the case November 1998 scientists had counted 27 along the lower part of the stream. Thus, in fish that had made their way back to the site the upper reaches of the Elbe, one may still of release, fourteen of which were identi- find riparian zones that are good habitat fied as spawners. for flora and fauna.

The return of spawning salmon has been a The Atlantic salmon has been identified as landmark in the realization of the project. an indicator species for discharge, water Nonetheless, there is still a long way to go quality, and the integrity of stream systems before the Atlantic salmon is reestablished because of its high sensitivity to these re- as an integral part of the river system, and quirements. The future development of the

News & Information 125

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 30 Sep 2021 at 18:39:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1466046600000521