Eel ban the right decision to save a species

IN RECENT years we’ve heard a lot about the decline in stocks of salmon and sea trout in Ireland and abroad, but less about the plight of the humble eel.

But eels are in real trouble, even more trouble than salmon and sea trout.

In 2002 the International Council for the Exploration of the SEA (ICES) declared that stocks of European eels were so depleted they were now “outside safe biological limits”. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has carried out a study which resulted in eels being declared critically endangered. This is the last category before extinct.