A demonstration staged in Perth by Protect Wild Scotland (PWS) has been described as “pitiful” by the head of the organisation it targeted.
Andrew Wallace, chairman of the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland (Rafts), defended its track record following the demonstration by PWS against salmon farms.
“It is important we put Protect Wild Scotland’s rather eccentric views of the world in context,” Mr Wallace said.
“The ‘demonstration’ they mounted at our AGM in Perth consisted of four people. This was hardly Greenham Common.”
The protest was organised by PWS director Don Staniford with the backing of its chairwoman Jenny Scobie, who earlier this year reported Rafts to Scottish charities regulator OSCR.
Mr Wallace added: “Her complaint included the assertion that Rafts was promoting a programme to facilitate an increase in the salmon farming industry in Scotland.
“OSCR completed their investigation last week and gave Rafts a completely clean bill of health, rejecting all of Mrs Scobie’s allegations.
“RAFTS as an organisation is involved in a wide variety of fisheries and freshwater habitat conservation and management projects throughout Scotland.
“The impacts of salmon farming form one part of this portfolio of work and the recent work we have been doing on aquaculture impacts has been ground-breaking so much so that Mr Staniford and Mrs Scobie have cited, throughout their objection to a recent salmon farm planning application in Wester Ross, many of the outputs from Rafts’ work. We are therefore not that clear what PWS think about anything.
“Rafts is clear that salmon farming has the potential to seriously impact wild migratory salmon and sea trout stocks and is making every effort to provide solutions to what is a very difficult problem.
“Our approach to this is through monitoring and building arguments based on evidence and lobbying not mounting pitiful demonstrations while dressing up in Halloween masks.
“Other work Rafts is involved in include a wide range of freshwater conservation and management.
“Our track record to date speaks for itself: an extensive national invasive species control programme covering 1,000 km of water courses; the removal of barriers to fish migration, thus giving access to 2,000km of spawning and juvenile habitat for fish; the use of ground-breaking genetic research to help manage fish species better; and the development of an evidence-based approach to catchment management that is starting to provide benefits to many of Scotland’s freshwater systems.
“We recognise the right for anybody to criticise what we do but there are those who do work to make things better and those who talk about it, and so far we have yet to see any discernible benefit from any of the activities of PWS.”