UN votes to save the world's eels

Conservationists and anglers are celebrating tonight after delegates at a meeting of the United Nations' international wildlife convention CITES voted to include the eel on its endangered species list.

The move will tighten controls on international trade in the threatened fish. Experts say numbers have plummetted to just one per cebt of populations 30 years ago.

Once a species is listed on CITES, its trade can be banned completely in extreme cases, or only allowed if exporters can prove it was legally harvested and that trading it will not be detrimental to its survival in the wild.

Over fishing and demand from Japan, where the eel is a delicacy, have helped speed up their decline. Japanese diners eat up to 97,000 tonnes of eels a year.

These are netted live as glass eels or elvers in countries around the world, including British river estuaries, before being grown on to adult size.

More here .

Eels could be added to endangered list

A powerful international conservation group looks set to add the eel to its list of threatened species.

European eel numbers are feared to be as low as one per cent of their population 30 years ago.

But European Union efforts to control fishing were foiled this year by French politicians, fearful of alienating eel fishermen before parliamentary elections.

Next week the signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora will meet in The Hague to vote on a proposal to add the European eel to Appendix Two of its list of species.

It covers creatures which are not necessarily threatened with immediate extinction but may become so if further action is not taken.

Time running out for the eel, Minister warns

Eels are on the brink of extinction, Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw said today.

The stark warning came after what he described as “disasterous” talks in Brussels at which France, Spain and Italy blocked conservation measures which would have countered illegal catches and given stocks of both eels and tuna a chance to recover.

Mr Bradshaw said stocks of the once-common eel were now believed to have become 99 per cent depleted.

“I am bitterly disappointed that the EU has again failed to take the action needed to protect tuna and eels,” said Mr Bradshaw.

“Eels are on the brink of extinction, bluefin tuna on the verge of collapse. We have been talking about both for several years and marine scientists say only urgent and radical action can save both species.

“This failure seriously damages the credibility of the EU on the environment. It is repeatedly failing to take vital action to tackle the marine environment because of the refusal of a number of member states to do anything except exactly what their fishermen ask.”

There is no practical way of shutting down eel-fishing waters because of their transatlantic migration patterns.

Proposals to make netsmen contribute a proportion of the eels they catch to restocking programmes collapsed after determined opposition from the French Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau.

Mr Bradshaw said: “The decline of the eel in the past three decades has been catastrophic and the state of the population is dire.”

Conservationists say a Europe-wide strategy is needed. But netsmen can earn up to £1,000 a night catching elvers or glass eels.

Illegal eel nets seized and netter nabbed

Illegal eel nets seized have been seized from a Hampshire nature reserve. Anglersnet has the story, click here.

In a seperate incident, AN is also reporting a court case in which an illegal netsman was fined £600 and ordered to pay £475 costs. Click here for this story.

Pike and other coarse fish can be caught in fyke nets, while otters can drown in nets set without special guards which stop them swimming in after the fish they contain.

Eels are also a much-loved summer quarry of many predator anglers, a fish which appears to be getting rarer and rarer.