Communications with the Dee District Salmon Fishery Board and The Dee Trust: EIR release

Information requested

Please supply the following information/documentation: Full details of communications between the Dee District Salmon Fishery Board/The Dee Trust and the Scottish Government since the 1st December 2023 (including reports, proposals and any other documentation) regarding the MDs (Freshwater Lab, Pitlochry) fish population monitoring facilities/activities/future of the Girnock Burn near Ballater, Aberdeenshire.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

1. I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested. Please find enclosed PDF items 1 to 11.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’,so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

2. Some of the information you have requested is available from the website below. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.

A paper (sent as a PDF attachment in item 9) which investigated the effects of ova stocking on freshwater emigrant production in a declining Scottish population of “spring” Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) – May 2015. DOI: 10.1080/00028487.2015.1017655 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275893443_Can_Conservation_Stocking_Enhance_Juvenile_Emigrant_Production_in_Wild_Atlantic_Salmon

3. Within items 3 and 8 certain sections are subject to crown copyright. The paper linked above subject to crown copyright in its entirety. Therefore this information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. You can find details on the arrangements for re-using Crown Copyright material on the National Archives website at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above. If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.