As WildFish’s farmed salmon campaign manager, Lex coordinates our ambitious Off the table coalition campaign calling on chefs, restaurants and catering businesses to take farmed salmon off their menus. She’s worked at the forefront of animal protection for almost two decades, tirelessly striving for greater conservation through high-impact campaigns and hard-hitting investigations.
I’ve worked at the forefront of animal protection for almost two decades and in that time have tirelessly campaigned to end the persecution of whales in the Southern Ocean; hold illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing operators around West Africa accountable; and expose the destructive nature of Scottish salmon farming through hard-hitting investigations.
Having professionally trained as a librarian, being a full-time campaigner is not something I ever planned. I’d say it was more like an accident, driven by a passion and a sense of duty to defend, conserve and protect our natural world.
As WildFish’s new farmed salmon campaign manager I’ll be overseeing the organisation’s Off the table (OTT) coalition campaign, calling on the hospitality sector to remove farmed salmon from their menus.
Since the launch of OTT in 2022, the movement has grown to almost 300 chefs, restaurants and caterers, as well as 60 supporting NGOs, across not just the UK but also Iceland, Australia, Canada and more. This is a huge achievement and a key indicator of the increasing distaste for unsustainable food systems.
Over the last 50 years, open-cage salmon farms have wreaked havoc on the environment and have played a central role in the devastating decline of wild salmon populations. I hope that by continuing to build momentum for the Off the table campaign and supporting WildFish’s vital work to oppose salmon farming, I can help positively influence our growing movement of chefs and encourage more people to leave salmon off their plates.
To avoid being predictable, I’m championing the humble river lamprey! Like salmon, the river lamprey is an anadromous species – spawning in freshwater but completing part of their life cycle in the sea. What I love about them is their strange circular jaws and horny teeth used to clamp onto their prey and suck their blood. They’re like real-life vampires!
In the UK, we have three types of lamprey – brook, river and sea. All of these are rare and protected species threatened by habitat degradation, poor water quality, loss of larval habitat and physical barriers in rivers. It’s a sad and increasingly typical story but these remarkable creatures have survived more than 450 million years of change.
Support like yours allows our determined campaigning team to fight the destruction caused by open-net salmon farming, pollution and over-abstraction
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I have been a regular fly fisher now for more than 35 years, and over that time the decline in salmon catches has not been greater than in the last 8-10 years! We have known in all the 35 years that salmon farming has probably been the main culprit. It can be a difficult conversation, but the husbandry that used to exist on most of the salmon rivers has not been allowed to take place.