Brown/Sea Trout (Salmo trutta)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Vertebrate > bony fish (Actinopterygii) > Fish |
| Red List Status: | (Not Relevant) [(not listed)(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Salmo trutta |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | Linnaeus, 1758 |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | (not listed) |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | Sea Trout (subsp. trutta) is listed separately. |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Declines in UK due to habitat degradation via poor water quality, barriers to migration, hydrological modification, exploitation and biotic pressures. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Targeted habitat restoration & monitoring required. Improved evidence base needed to inform fishery management practices. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Habitat loss and degradation, pollution and barriers are all risks. Need migratory passage. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 5. Remedial action identified |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Low - Combination or other (detail in comments) |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Combination - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | For Sea Trout, refer to the entry for Salmo trutta subsp. trutta. Pressures outside England, policy conflict - fishing. Required: improved fishery management (controls on stocking) and exploitation control. Habitat improvements (water quality, flow, access to suitable, clean spawning gravels are priority actions together with ensuring protection of the marine ecosystems on which they depend (esp. prey availability e.g. sandeel) and to avoid bycatch in inshore coastal nets especially those deployed to catch bass. Marine bycatch (Mackerel / Herring fisheries in the North Atlantic) may also be a pressure and therefore a policy conflict. Predation pressure may also be more significant than previously thought. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Undertake prioritised barrier removal or easement to deliver longitudinal connectivity across freshwater habitats and unhindered in river migratory passage.
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Pressure mitigation
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites:
Comments:
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Review available evidence and undertake research of fishery management practices such as stocking, rearing and exploitation to direct conservation actions.
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Habitat management
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites:
Comments:
Key Action 3
Proposed Action: A secured and spatially extensive long-term monitoring programme to adequately assess trends in all life stages of brown trout, allowing the greatest pressures acting on the population to be identified and conservation actions to be prioritised.
Action targets: 3. National Monitoring Plan agreed and implemented
Action type: Targeted monitoring
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites:
Comments:
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.