UK Nature and Environment

From the comfort of the riverbank you’d be forgiven for wandering beside the River Usk in ignorant bliss. At a glance it looks pleasant and inviting – but swim in it at your peril.

“It’s full of s***,” Phil Waggott says, pulling no punches. He began fishing for salmon in the Usk in the 1980s in Crickhowell when stocks were plentiful and demand was high but he has not seen, let alone caught, a salmon in the Usk for more than a year – and it’s depressingly easy to see why.

I’ve been beside the banks of the river at Usk Island in Monmouthshire for five minutes when one swimmer tells me they got out recently when they realised they were navigating their way through floating human faeces. “It’s slowly gone into decline and now it’s all but dead,” Phil sighs, recalling better times. “First the dace went, then the salmon, then trout, parr, and now very little is left at all. It’s really like chalk and cheese compared to what it was before in the Usk. It isn’t even recognisable to what it was 10 years ago.