UK government (DEFRA) is considering permitting the sale of millions of elvers (baby eels) from Gloucester to Russia next spring.  Already last year they allowed the export of 1 tonne (3 million individuals) of this critically endangered species.

This is contrary to the letter and the spirit of Europe-wide laws and regulations designed to save this crucial species, to which the UK is a signatory.

This trade benefits the UK's sole surviving elver trader. Only a small amount of the sale price filters back to the few remaining part-time elver fishermen. It's importance to the local economy is negligible.

These elvers will be sold to Kaliningrad, a known transit point for the vast smuggling trade in elvers, the most smuggled wildlife in the world by numbers and by value.  This trade is not justifiable. Help us stop it.

There is no justification for this trade and there is much evidence to suggest that the Russians are ignoring the export conditions that Defra try to impose. This does not seem to be a conservation project; there is much evidence that the Russians intend to farm the elvers in the lagoons and in a fish farm and to grow and then eat them. The fisheries chief in Kaliningrad has been reported saying they will catch all the eels before they have a chance to migrate, which means that there will be NO conservation element in the restocking whatsoever. They appear also to have sent elvers on to Belorus, against the export conditions and not to any known conservation project.To eel conservationists there is little distinction between an eel smuggled to China or Japan and one eaten by the Russians.