OATAO is an open access repository that collects the work of some Toulouse researchers and makes it freely available over the web where possible.

Ecosystem fragmentation is a serious threat to biodiversity and one of the main challenges in ecosystem restoration. River continuity restoration (RCR) has often targeted diadromous fishes, a group of species supporting strong cultural and economic values and especially sensitive to river fragmentation. Yet it has frequently produced mixed results and diadromous fishes remain at very low levels of abundance. Against this background, this paper presents the main challenges for defining, evaluating and achieving effective RCR. We first identify challenges specific to disciplines. In ecology, there is a need to develop quantitative and mechanistic models to support decision making, accounting for both direct and indirect impacts of river obstacles and working at the river catchment scale. In a context of dwindling abundances and reduced market value, cultural services provided by diadromous fishes are becoming increasingly prominent. Methods for carrying out economic quantification of non-market values of diadromous fishes become ever more urgent. Given current challenges for rivers to meet all needs sustainably, conflicts arise over the legitimate use of water resources for human purposes. Concepts and methods from political science and geography are needed to develop understandings on how the political work of public authorities and stakeholders can influence the legitimacy of restoration projects. Finally, the most exciting challenge is to combine disciplinary outcomes to achieve a multidisciplinary approach to RCR. Accordingly, the co-construction of intermediary objects and diagrams of flows of knowledge among disciplines can be first steps towards new frameworks supporting restoration design and planning.

1. Changes in migration timing, resulting from the alteration in river continuity or the effect of climate change, can have major consequences on the population dynamics of diadromous fish. Forecasting the phenology of fish migration is thus critically important to implement management actions aimed at protecting fish during their migration. 2. In this study, an 11-year monitoring survey of Atlantic salmon smolts (Salmo salar) from the Ourthe River, Belgium, was analysed within a European Special Area of Conservation to improve the understanding of environment-induced spring migration. A logistic model was fitted to forecast smolt migration and to calculate phenological indicators for management, i.e. the onset, end, and duration of migration, while accounting for the influence of photoperiod, water temperature, and hydrological conditions. 3. The results indicated that the photo-thermal units accumulated by smolts above a 7 C temperature threshold was a relevant proxy to reflect the synergistic effect between temperature and photoperiod on smolt migration. After integrating the effect of river flow pulses, the model accurately explained the inter-annual changes in migration timing (R 2 = 0.95). The model predictions provide decisive management information to identify sensitive periods during which mitigation measures (e.g. hydropower turbine shutdown, river discharge management) should be conducted to promote smolt survival. 4. The model was used to predict phenological characteristics under future scenarios of climate change. The results suggest a joint effect of hydrological alterations and water warming. Temperature increases of 1-4 C were associated with earlier initiation of migration, 6-51 days earlier, and spring flood events greatly influenced the duration of the migration period. Accordingly, the combined effects of human-induced modifications of the hydrological regimes and increasing temperatures could result in a mismatch between the smolt and favourable survival conditions in the marine environment.

The Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is one of the world’s most emblematic freshwater fish. Despite conservation and rehabilitation plans, populations of this species are dramatically declining due to human impacts such as habitat fragmentation, overfishing and water pollution. Owing to their large body size, anadromous adults were historically invulnerable to fish predation during their spawning period migration. This invulnerability has disappeared in Western Europe with the introduction of a new freshwater predator, the European catfish (Silurus glanis). Here we report how adults of Atlantic salmon are predated in the fishway of a large river of SW France, where the delayed and narrow passage created by the structure increases the probability of predator-prey encounter. We assessed predation risk by monitoring salmon and catfish in one fishway of the River Garonne, using video fish-counting from 1993 to 2016. We analysed the predation strategy of catfish using observations made with acoustic camera and RFID telemetry in 2016. Our results demonstrate a high predation rate (35%—14/39 ind.) on salmon inside the fishway during the 2016 spawning period migration. Our results suggest that a few specialized catfish individuals adapted their hunting behaviour to such prey, including their presence synchronized with that of salmon (i.e, more occurrences by the end of the day). Such results suggest that the spread of European catfish will potentially impact migration of anadromous species through anthropized systems.

The sustained development of hydropower energy in the last century has caused important ecological impacts, promoting recent advances in efficient mitigation measures to be implemented in existing and future hydropower plants. Although upstream fish migration has been largely addressed with the development of fish-pass infrastructures, downstream passage solutions are often missing or inefficient, strengthening the need for their improvement and efficiency assessment. The efficiency of horizontally inclined (26°) low bar spacing racks associated to a bypass was assessed using salmon smolts radiotelemetry along three successive hydropower plants (HPP) in the Ariège River (southern France). In average, nearly 90% of the smolts were successfully protected by the racks and rapidly guided to the bypass, within few minutes in most cases. Furthermore, we detected a significant positive influence of the bypass discharge (Q bp% expressed as the proportion of concurrent HPP discharge) on the probability of successful bypass passage, reaching 85% of successful passage with a Q bp% of only 3%, and more than 92% when the Q bp% exceeded 5%. The probability of bypass passage without hesitation (e.g. passage within the first 5 minutes) also increased with Q bp% , and reached 90% with 5% of Q bp% . Passage without hesitation was especially detected on the site having larger bypass entrances and transversal currents, providing better guidance into the bypass. High-efficiency results of inclined racks yielded with reduced Q bp% confirmed their relevance to mitigate some of the HPP ecological impacts, re-establishing safe downstream salmon migration with lower impact on energy production than older less efficient solutions.