In January, we posted a link to a petition to ask the UK Government to stop the export of elvers to Russia. We are delighted to hear that the petition was successful and eels caught in British estuaries will no longer be exported after a restocking project in Kaliningrad was refused by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Last year, the authorities allowed one tonne of endangered glass eels (about 3 million fish) to be exported. These were caught in spring in the Severn estuary by elver fishers who have worked the area for years.
The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a protected, red-listed species, with the number of elvers migrating into European rivers having declined by 95% since the 1980s.
Photograph: Sören Stache/AP