Scotland's latest wild salmon progress report puts a figure on a part of habitat restoration that can be hard to see from the riverbank. By the end of 2025, 388 potential fish barriers were in the river basin programme. Work had been completed at 28, including two during 2025. The Scottish Government published those figures on 14 October 2026 in its annual update on implementing the Wild Salmon Strategy. They describe an inventory and stages of work across Scotland. They do not represent hundreds of structures removed in one year.
What the programme counted
The annual report follows actions on active structures, such as those associated with hydropower and water use, and historic structures, including redundant weirs. It also follows a review of obstacles such as some bridges and culverts. The original third River Basin Management Plan identified 244 potential barriers. The new report's higher total reflects additions to the programme since 2021. That change is useful in itself. It indicates that a programme intended to address a known list must also account for sites added as assessment advances. An increase in the list does not establish that every addition is newly built or that river conditions deteriorated by the same proportion.
Of the 388 structures on the list at the end of 2025, 176 had been assessed and screened out, generally because there was insufficient suitable habitat upstream to justify the proposed intervention. Another 50 were still being scoped, and 134 were at stages ranging from design to licensing and construction. The remaining 28 were recorded as complete. During 2025 specifically, 61 structures were scoped, with 36 screened out and 25 advancing to design and licensing. The annual figure for scoping measures a different stage of work from the annual figure of two completed projects. Counting both is useful, but adding them together would create a misleading completion total.
Why upstream habitat changes the decision
Atlantic salmon, *Salmo salar*, return from sea to reproduce in rivers. Young fish spend part of their lives in freshwater before migrating downstream. An obstacle that prevents access to spawning or rearing water can therefore affect more than one stage of the life cycle. A barrier may be passable in some flows and difficult in others. A culvert can combine high speed inside the pipe with a shallow or perched outlet, while a weir can separate fish from a long reach without much visible difference in water level at a casual glance.
The amount and condition of habitat upstream matter as much as the obstacle itself. Reopening a route to cold tributaries, gravel or varied juvenile habitat can create an opportunity that is absent below the obstruction. A short reach already cut off by another impassable feature offers less benefit until that second problem is understood. The same is true if the water above is too warm, lacks adequate flow or offers little suitable bed. That helps explain why screening a site out after assessment can be a reasonable decision rather than an abandoned project. The reported 176 screened sites show that the list of potential obstacles was intentionally larger than the final construction programme.
At a redundant structure, removal may reconnect the channel and restore part of its physical behaviour. At a working structure, designers may need to preserve water levels or other functions and make passage easier without removing the whole asset. The report says stakeholder engagement is part of understanding secondary effects. The relevant local voices can include people who own or depend on the structure, neighbouring landholders and river managers. Their practical concerns matter when choosing among designs. A decision to discuss a structure with its operator is distinct from a finding that a chosen design is already working.
The programme and the salmon trend tell different stories
The same October report describes a continuing long-term decline in salmon returning to the Scottish coast and a more recent decline in the estimated number surviving to spawn. For the 2026 season it reports that 66 percent of the 173 assessed stocks were classed as poor and 18 percent as good. Stock assessment units do not all represent one river and do not contribute equal numbers of fish. The report notes that the relatively small share of units assessed as good accounts for a much larger share of national salmon production. The figures give context for the urgency of the habitat work. They cannot establish the response to an individual fishway.
At a single site, the first useful ecological evidence is whether fish pass at times and flows when they need to move. Later records can ask whether salmon spawn above the former obstacle and whether juveniles use the newly accessible water. A survey finding fish upstream can be valuable, especially alongside a reliable baseline. If fish were there before, the more useful question may be whether passage improved, was less selective by size or occurred under a wider range of flows. Measuring fish use in one season still leaves questions about survival, later adult returns and changes outside the catchment.
Anglers can use the distinction to interpret a catch report or a river notice. An improved structure does not create a right to fish the adjacent water. A catch on one reach does not establish that the national stock trend has turned. Reliable local observations can help a river group decide where to look, but records are strongest when the date, water conditions and position are known. This is a report on habitat work and stock context. Current fishing restrictions remain a separate matter for each water.
The dates to watch next
What a useful site record would show
For an individual river, the most helpful record would trace the completed structure to a named reach and show how much suitable habitat was available upstream. A short gap between two obstructions has different value from a route into a long, cool tributary with spawning gravel. The assessment also needs to follow the downstream route. Young fish leaving an upstream reach must get past the same obstacle and any structures farther down, even where the first improvement was designed around returning adults.
A survey above the former barrier can answer a different question from a camera or counter at the structure. Seeing an adult pass confirms a route was usable at the recorded flow. Finding young salmon of more than one age above it over successive surveys would add evidence about reproduction and persistence. Comparing those observations with a downstream station, and recording unusually low or high water, would make a year-to-year difference easier to interpret.
The categories in the appendix give local fisheries trusts and river managers a way to ask for that detail. They can use the totals to track how many obstacles are moving toward construction, then examine which completed sites warrant repeated biological surveys. A register that follows the same sites over time would also clarify when a change in the national total reflects a finished job, a reassessment or a revised programme boundary.
The October report expects 57 barriers to have been removed or eased by December 2027, including the 28 already complete at the end of 2025. It also expects a further group of interventions to carry into the next river basin programme at different stages of development. These are expectations, not records of later delivery. The report says the next draft river basin plan consultation was due in December 2026, giving people a place to look for more detail about the proposed next phase.
A useful follow-up will ask which of the sites still in development reached construction, which were screened out after further work and which completed sites have comparable observations of fish movement. The national totals make it possible to ask those questions without confusing a design, a construction finish and a biological result. The October update advances the accounting. Evidence from individual rivers will show how much the changes improve usable habitat for salmon.