In a move to replenish the Loire River basin with salmon, the French government implemented the Plan Loire Grandeur Nature project in June 1998. The primary purpose was to get 6,000 adult salmon return to the Loire estuary in 10 years.

Under the scheme, the Saint-Etienne-du-Vigan Dam on the Upper Allier River in France was dismantled on June 24 at a cost of us $2.3 million. Another structure whose breakdown is almost complete in France is the Maisons-Rouges Dam on the Vienne River, the most important tributary of the Loire River afterthe Allier. The operation costs about us $1.6 million.

In terms of the damage these dams wrought on the local economy, the cost of dismantling them is justifiable. The Saint-Etienne-du-Vigan Dam, for example, produced just 3.5 megawatts/hour/year, which is a tiny fraction of the nation's electrical output. In return, it had sterilised 28.35 hectares of the Loire River basin's best salmon spawning grounds. The dismantling of the Maison-Rouges Dam,for example, will allow free migratory passage to salmon and enable them to return totheir former spawning grounds on the Vienne River basin.