Millions of critically endangered eels have indeed been exported from Britain to Russia this year, but this is not “bonkers”, as Andrew Kerr of the Sustainable Eel Group claims, as it is a project to conserve the species that was in development before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (UK export of millions of endangered eels to Russia attacked as ‘bonkers’, 22 October).
Juvenile eels are transported from the Severn estuary to the Vistula and Curonian lagoons, which Russia shares with Poland and Lithuania. Unlike the River Severn, the lagoons are pristine habitats for eels, with unrestricted migratory pathways to the Baltic and thence to their breeding grounds in the Sargasso Sea.
In contrast, the wetland eel habitat of the Severn has been destroyed by modern agriculture, industry, housing estates and pollution. What little remains is inaccessible to the eels because of the human-made barriers to migration, including locks and weirs used by pleasure boats, and flood defences. Therefore, most of the eels that swim into the Severn estuary perish.
For the technically minded, the surplus of eels in the Severn has a robust scientific basis, as set out in the Joint Nature Conservation Committee report No 745. In the absence of conservation and governmental organisations with the stomach to fix the loss of habitat and the migratory barriers in the light of economic pressures, translocation of eels, which otherwise will die, to one of the last pristine environments is one of the viable options to try to conserve the species.
The exports to Russia do not serve or further Russian objectives in the war but rather, when the next generation has spawned, will benefit western European rivers most.
Peter Wood
Glass Eels Ltd
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