Trout and Char of the North Atlantic Isles

This chapter covers Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales), Ireland (Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland), Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. Most of the current land area was covered by the Last Glaciation, which reached a maximum circa 18,000 years ago. Other than for southern and southeastern England, there was no postglacial freshwater connection to mainland Europe, and thus, the only native populations of freshwater fishes outside southern and southeastern England today are the euryhaline salmonids (Salmo spp., Salvelinus spp., and Coregonus spp.), European Smelt Osmerus eperlanus, Threespine Stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus, Ninespine Stickleback Pungitius pungitius, and European Eel Anguilla anguilla. Brown Trout Salmo trutta, which belongs to the Eurasian and North African species complex, is native to all regions in
the North Atlantic Isles (NAI) with the exception of Greenland.