Fish and Fisheries Advisory Group

SEPA has created a Fish and Fisheries Advisory Group, which is a River Basin District Advisory Group under Section 17 of the Water Environment and Water Services Act (Scotland) 2003.

The main purpose of the Advisory Group is to provide advice to SEPA within the Scotland and Solway Tweed river basin districts on:

• monitoring and classification of fish populations;
• protection of fish populations and fisheries interests when regulating activities which affect the water environment. 

The Fish and Fisheries Advisory Group can convene meetings with representatives of wider stakeholder interests in order to progress the development of work such as regulatory guidance.

The Advisory Group includes representatives from organisations who have fish or fisheries interests, such as:

• the Association of District Salmon Fishery Boards ;
• the Rivers and Fishery Trusts of Scotland ;
• Scottish Natural Heritage ;
• Marine Scotland ;
• the Fisheries (Electricity) Committee .

Together with SEPA regulatory, policy and fisheries science staff, the membership provides a wide knowledge base available to advise us on strategic issues relating to the development of policy, guidance and research in the protection of fish and fisheries.

The expertise within the Fish and Fisheries Advisory Group will support SEPA’s in-house fish science capabilities. SEPA has ecologists based in area teams who have varying levels of fisheries expertise and have been involved in water quality issues in the past. With SEPA’s responsibilities for abstractions, the Ecology function is now supported by 5 further staff specialising in fisheries: a Senior Fisheries Scientist, 2 Fisheries Scientists and 2 Assistant Fisheries Scientists.

Meeting minutes

• FFAG minutes - 15 June 2009  (35kb)
• FFAG minutes - 13 March 2009  (22kb)