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Salmon, one of the favorite fish of the French, is back in the Rhine after having completely disappeared from the river. Some dams have been built to facilitate the ascent of the river. The whole region got involved.
The Rhine is the main commercial river in Europe with more than 1,300 kilometers partly channeled and industrialized. For 30 years, it has been the object of an attempt at ecological reconquest. In Gambsheim (Bas-Rhin), enthusiasts come to observe a hydroelectric dam through which large migratory fish, such as salmon, pass. It was specially designed to allow them to go up the river using concrete stairs.
The Rhine too developed and polluted for salmon
A few years ago, seeing salmon there would have been impossible, the salmon having disappeared from the Rhine due to the rupture of ecological continuity with “dams, overfishing, pollution, environmental degradation”, explains Florian Lucas, in charge of animation at the Saumon-Rhin association. In the 1950s, the Rhine, overdeveloped and polluted, saw salmon disappear from its waters, which until then had the most fish and salmon in Europe. Today, they are reared in pools before being released into the tributaries of the Rhine. But will the bet of reintroduction be a winner? Especially since climate change is now also part of the equation. The objective remains nevertheless to see salmon again, in the long term, in the Rhine.