SALMON stocks in the River Severn and the Severn Estuary will be protected under new plans for the long-term future of salmon fisheries.

The River Severn has failed to achieve its spawning target for salmon in the last four years, although its upper reaches and tributaries such as the River Teme include unspoilt habitats supporting good salmon populations.

In the mid-1980s, around 70 million salmon eggs were thought to have been deposited in the River Severn each year. But by 2000, this had fallen to around 10 million.

The Environment Agency's action plan for the river, launched this week, aims to protect and improve the stocks.

It has been produced under a National Salmon Management Strategy that includes plans for all the principal salmon rivers in England and Wales.

The Severn Estuary Salmon Action Plan is the only one created specifically for an estuary.

Measures taken there are particularly important because salmon caught in the estuary may be returning to spawning grounds in any one of a number of rivers, including the River Wye, where salmon stocks are at an all-time low.

Salmon remember the scent of their home river and return to their spawning grounds to lay their eggs after a number of years at sea.

Some of the fishing methods used are unique to the Severn estuary, including two ancient methods - one is a single fisherman using a lave or dip net and the other uses ranks of funnel-shaped traps or "putchers" secured to frames.

In the late 1800s there were more than 50 ranks of putchers in the estuary, but only seven remained by 2000 and the number of fishermen licensed to use lave nets has fallen more recently from 45 in 1985 to just 20 in 2000.

"Our primary concern in drafting the salmon action plans has been to achieve a balance between the need to preserve the traditional skills in use on the estuary today and to ensure that there are sufficient fish for tomorrow's fishermen to catch," said Dr John Woolland, the Environment Agency's senior technical specialist for fisheries.

The progress of the action plans will be monitored and reported annually.