50-year plan to restore Lee salmon

Donal Hickey hears ambitious plan has its detractors.

SALMON have all but disappeared from the upper River Lee in the past 50 years, but the South Western Regional Fisheries Board (SWRFB) has come up with what it describes as an ‘ambitious’ draft plan to bring them back over the next 50 years.

Their decline, in a river that formerly boasted excellent runs and was once rated among Ireland’s best salmon fisheries, can be traced back to the construction of two hydro-electric dams at Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid by the ESB, in the late 1950’s.