At a Torridge Council committee meeting last week to scrutinise the health of our rivers, we heard that although otters are now thriving on the Torridge, salmon have seriously decreased. This provides an interesting reflection on the variable fate of the protagonists of Henry Williamson’s locally based books: Tarka the Otter (1927) and Salar the Salmon (1935).

We wrote on a previous occasion about the deep-rooted emotional pull Tarka still exerts on our area, providing valuable branding for businesses from cafés to self-storage.

Salar is less well known and perhaps deserves more attention bearing in mind that salmon have declined to only about 10% of the numbers in our rivers fifty years ago.

The life story of the salmon is one of nature’s amazing journeys, as mature fish return to the spawning grounds of their birth – their natal streams – to reproduce. Salmon are born in freshwater, migrate to the open sea as young smolts and after several years living and feeding in the ocean, make the perilous journey back to their birthplace. This is the emotional journey that Henry Williamson recounts in Salar the Salmon: from the ‘water of the Two Rivers’ up the Taw, Mole and Bray rivers to Exmoor.

Each stage is described in exquisite detail, highlighting the interaction with humans as well as with predators and nature. As Salar enters the estuary, he gets trapped in nets. Williamson highlights the rivalry between the poorer people engaged in netting in the estuary and the richer folk fishing with rods and lines higher up the river.

The name Salar derives from a Latin verb meaning ‘to leap with joy’. Salar also has to overcome weirs built to hold water back for mills. Salmon doors were built in weirs to allow them through, for the benefit of fishermen upstream. Williamson must have felt great delight at seeing silvery salmon leaping out of the water over a weir.

Williamson reminds us that heavy rain, flooding and pollution are not new dangers to wildlife – they existed in the 1930s too – but that unthinking human intervention can easily upset the delicate ecological balance needed to sustain lifecycles such as those of the salmon. The decline of the species is not new – it derives from farming practices introduced in the post-war period – but it is now being exacerbated by climate change, run off and destruction of the gravel beds salmon need to spawn.