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SAINT JOHN, N.B. — A new report from a group advocating for the protection and conservation of wild Atlantic salmon says the number of salmon in North American rivers has dropped for the second year in a row.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation’s annual State of the Populations report says numbers in 2017 dipped overall by 15 per cent compared to the year before, and that only half of the 84 rivers assessed in North America met the minimum conservation limit required to safely sustain the species.

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A further 22 of those rivers had fewer than half of the required number of spawning salmon.

“When you look at the numbers and you’re comparing year-to-year, you’re really only getting a snapshot in time of what is happening,” said federation spokesman Neville Crabbe during a phone interview Sunday.

“But when you pull back the lens and look at what’s happened since the 1970s, we’ve had multidecadal declines in wild Atlantic salmon populations throughout North America.”