WildFish, Salisbury (2026)

27/08/2026

🚨 HEARING UPDATE: Southern Water Drought Order could “devastate” River Test.

Southern Water announced this month that it is applying for a Drought Order, so that it can keep taking water from the River Test when the flows have dropped to dangerous levels. WildFish has objected to the application.

The water company is also applying for a Non-Essential Use Ban (NEUB) in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, which WildFish has not objected to.

At the hearing, which took place this week, the Planning Inspector heard evidence from the water company, objectors, the Environment Agency and Natural England.

➡️ In our objection letter, we say the proposed plan is “defective” and that compensation/ mitigation measures proposed by Southern Water fail to address fully the potential harm to the river. By lowering the water level, abstractions can lead to low flows, resulting in a host of problems for wildlife.

🙄 Southern Water could have potentially avoided having to apply for a Drought Order if the water company had acted sooner to provide completed, long-term supply measures such as new reservoirs and water recycling.

The Inspector will now pass their recommendations to Defra, where a final decision will be made to grant or refuse the Drought Order.

We'll be sharing updates about this important outcome via our social media channels and in our email newsletter - you can subscribe for updates direct to your inbox 🔗

📸 Heather Hamilton

25/08/2026

🚨 1992. That’s the last time we built a new reservoir in the UK. That’s over 30 years ago.

A clear demonstration that the UK’s water industry is failing to invest in the long-term infrastructure needed to secure future water supplies, leaving wild fish and their freshwater habitats paying the price.

Danny, WildFish’s senior campaigns researcher, explains more about the disastrous impacts of over abstraction on wild fish…

You might be thinking - but it’s rained now? In the past week, some parts of the UK have seen rain for the first time in over a month. This is a welcome sight. Unfortunately, no amount of rain can undo the impacts of over-abstraction, unless we have the infrastructure to capture and store it. ☔

⚠️ What wild fish and their rivers really need is for water companies to invest in alternative supply solutions and water-saving infrastructure to meet supply requirements without compromising freshwater environments.

Keep up to date with our fight to protect wild fish by subscribing to our newsletter 🔗 https://wildfish.org/ .

21/08/2026

🚨 Mowi salmon farm adds pressure to declining wild salmon populations in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

The local authority Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have approved the re-location of a Mowi farm off the east coast of Lewis to beyond the mouth of Loch Erisort.

The Norwegian-owned salmon farm company claims that the relocation will “reduce potential interactions with wild salmonids”. It’s a rare admission by the industry giant that open-net salmon farming is negatively impacting Scotland’s declining wild salmon population. 📉

In reality, however, moving the farm further offshore does not remove the disastrous impacts of salmon farming, including pollution, disease and potentially increased risk of escapes, leading to genetic introgression within wild salmon populations.

Nick Underdown, WildFish’s Scotland Director, concludes:

“Faced with a tidal wave of proposed salmon farm developments, the Scottish Government should look to countries like Canada, which is removing salmon farms from many of its coastal waters due to the risk they present to wild salmon.”

➡️ It’s clear: The Scottish Government must back wild salmon recovery by stopping the expansion of salmon farming in Scotland.

Sign up for updates like this one direct to your inbox 🔗 https://wildfish.org/ .

📸 Taken inside a Mowi salmon farm

19/08/2026

Small, slimy and a little strange... meet the European bullhead. 👋

Did you know:

➡️ Bullheads live at the bottom of fast-flowing, stony streams and rivers across England and Wales.
➡️ They're small but mighty. At just 6cm-8cm in length, bullheads are fierce predators, feeding on worms, aquatic insects and tiny fish.
➡️ They can be very protective. Bullhead dads guard their eggs until they hatch, chasing away any potential predators.
➡️ As a crepuscular species, European bullheads hunt in the hours of dusk and dawn.
European bullheads are just one of the wild fish species that WildFish is fighting to protect.

At WildFish, we hold governments, regulators and polluters to account. We push for stronger protections and collect data that exposes the truth about our rivers. And we won’t stop until wild fish have the future they deserve.

Love wild fish too? Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest campaign updates and ways to take action 🔗 https://wildfish.org/ .

18/08/2026

The better we understand freshwater invertebrates, the better we can protect wild fish.

Our SmartRivers volunteers monitor freshwater invertebrates through the established kick sampling method used by environmental regulators. Freshwater invertebrates are powerful indicators of river health, helping us understand the pressures affecting catchments over time. 🪲

This autumn, we're excited to introduce environmental DNA (eDNA) to complement our SmartRivers toolkit through our partners at Trace Biomonitoring. eDNA analyses traces of DNA released into the environment by organisms living in and around rivers, including invertebrates.

By combining these datasets, we'll gain an even richer understanding of invertebrate diversity, improve our assessment of river health and strengthen the evidence needed to protect our wild fish populations.

Sam, our senior freshwater ecologist, explains more about the benefits of using eDNA to detect freshwater invertebrates, and how this can help us better protect wild fish…

Learn more about SmartRivers, and how you can get involved in protecting your local river 🔗 https://wildfish.org/project/smart-rivers/.

17/08/2026

🚨 WildFish has objected to Southern Water's Drought Order application to abstract water from the River Test beyond environmentally safe limits.

The Test is a sensitive chalk stream in Hampshire home to endangered species, including the Atlantic salmon.

The Drought Order would mean that Southern Water could abstract beyond the river's current hands-off flow (HoF) limit. HoF is the minimum flow needed to protect the river's ecology.

⚠️ This could have serious short and long-term consequences for the River Test and its wild fish, placing them under even greater stress and increasing fish mortality.

Atlantic salmon from the protected River Itchen also use the Test. Taking too much water from the Test could therefore negatively impact the Itchen and its wild fish too.

💬 Nick Measham, CEO of WildFish, said:

"It is extremely frustrating to spend our time objecting again to a Drought Order because Southern Water has failed to do its job properly. Southern Water promised in 2018 it would use all best endeavours to provide alternative solutions to pumping the Test below safe limits.

We will be lucky to see any meaningful alternatives before the mid 2030s - nearly a decade late. This is a delay the salmon cannot afford.

Furthermore, Southern Water could have put in place temporary use and Non-Essential Use bans earlier but it was delayed. And finally, the mitigation and compensation for harming the Test is completely inadequate. The company is simply not trying hard enough for customers or the environment.”

Source: The Telegraph

14/08/2026

🚨 Right now, England is facing a growing water crisis.

Extreme weather and high temperatures are exposing years of under-investment, leaking infrastructure, sewage pollution and over-abstraction by the water industry.

The consequences are far-reaching, but nowhere are they more visible than in the health and survival of wild fish. 🐟

The water industry now faces the enormous challenge of building infrastructure to secure future water supplies. An investment that is desperately needed.

🙄 And yet Water UK, a trade association representing all of the water and wastewater companies across the UK), has published a report that repeatedly argues that environmental protections themselves are the problem.

Some of Water UK's proposed solutions to its own countless failures include:
❗ Weakening the Habitats Regulations, which serves to protect and conserve the UK’s rare and vulnerable sites and species.
❗ Raising the threshold for judicial review, making it harder for communities and conservation organisations to challenge unlawful decisions including ones that threaten protected rivers.
❗ Amending international environmental conventions or even withdrawing from them entirely, if they are considered obstacles to development.

These are not minor procedural reforms. They represent a fundamental attempt to weaken the legal safeguards that protect some of our most important rivers, wetlands and endangered species, such as Atlantic salmon.

➡️ The water industry must champion smarter regulation, better planning and investment that works with nature. Not against it.

Read our latest blog on this 🔗 wildfish.org/latest-news/the-water-industrys-answer-to-decades-of-failure-weaken-environmental-law/.

📸 Jack Perks Wildlife Media

13/08/2026

❗According to official Environment Agency data, less than 15% of water bodies in England are in a good ecological state.

🙄 This is disappointing but not surprising. Justin Neal, WildFish's head of legal, said:

"The latest classifications show that over 85% of rivers are off-target and many are in poor condition. The fact that none pass the chemicals test is unsurprising. These dire figures highlight not only the worrying state of our rivers, but also just how far the Government is from meeting its own targets. As things stand, the Government is woefully short of meeting its target of 75% of rivers being in good health by 2027.

What we need is a government mandate for regulators which prioritises the environment and that means more effort and investment in protecting rivers and streams. Only then might we begin to see improvement."

🐟 Clean, unpolluted water is essential for healthy wild fish populations. The Environment Agency must hold polluters to account, whether that's water companies, farmers or industry.

Source: The i paper

12/08/2026

🚨 In just four decades, European eel numbers have fallen by more than 90% in the UK.

For migratory fish species, like European eels, river connectivity is vital. River barriers, such as weirs, culverts and dams, prevent their movement and are a driving force in their decline.

European eels are born in the Sargasso sea before making their way to UK rivers. They spend the majority of their lives here before returning thousands of kilometres back to the Sargasso sea to spawn. 🐟

Manmade barriers in our rivers hamper their passage, preventing this epic migration in both directions.

➡️ We are demanding urgent government action to reconnect our rivers and save wild fish.

✊ Show your support for barrier-free rivers by adding your name now. Every name builds pressure and shows the UK government that there is strong public support for wild fish recovery.

🔗 https://act.wildfish.org/page/191721/subscribe/1?ea.tracking.id=Facebook.

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