Our unique combination of fisheries and geomorphological expertise meant we were well-placed to team up with the Galloway Fisheries Trust to help boost salmon stocks on the Water of Luce and Loch Strand Burn in Galloway. Although each watercourse is very different, both are heavily modified in a way that means salmon populations were well below their potential.

We used our fisheries expertise to identify where and why salmon populations were underperforming and our geomorphological expertise to design interventions that helped to tackle these problems. This had a heavy focus on the use of woody debris and targeted tree planting to create habitat diversity and instream and riparian shading.

In addition to providing specific recommendations for each river, we also produced a technical guidance document that described the nature of each intervention, its environmental benefit and how to install each one. This included information on how to site each intervention and the required fixings to use. This transferrable document can be used throughout the catchment, further increasing the value of our work.