A group of campaigners in Scotland have issued a rallying call to other coastal communities after winning a “David v Goliath” battle to block a fish farm in their local area.
The tiny highland community in Arnisdale at Loch Hourn, known as Scotland’s last wilderness, hailed the victory against multi-billion-pound salmon farm giant Mowi as a “milestone moment”.
The Friends of Loch Hourn group is now hopeful its campaign to block the expansion of the salmon farm will encourage other coastal communities and say it marks a “crucial first in the battle to protect wild fish populations”.
The group believes its knife-edge planning committee decision represents the first time in Scotland that such a project has been quashed because of the threat to wild salmon and sea trout and recognises the biggest threat posed by industrial scale fish farming is how parasites harm wild species.
Loch Hourn, considered the most fjord-like of Scotland’s west coast sea lochs, sits between the Glenelg peninsula to the north and the inaccessible Knoydart peninsula to the south.
The Creag an T’Sagairt salmon farm is owned and operated by the £2.28bn a year Norwegian seafood giant, Mowi and farms 2500 tonnes of salmon in its open cages.
It initially applied to Highland Council for permission to increase production by 25% to 3100 tonnes.
That spurred FoLH into action and with a combination of grant and private funding the group commissioned scientific modelling, which showed that the increased numbers of sea lice coming from the farm would not only further endanger wild salmon and trout, but also would adversely affect the vulnerable Loch Hourn population of freshwater pearl mussels.
On top of that, the the group says slow flushing loch cannot quickly get rid of the chemicals used by the farm to kill lice, which are also toxic to other crustaceans and potentially to swimmers.