Microchips to bring globally endangered eels back from brink

Monday, October 22, 2018

Wild eels are being microchipped in a bid to bring them back from the brink of global extinction.

Numbers of glass eels returning to the UK have decreased by 95% in the past 40 years due to habitat loss and obstructions in waterways hindering their movements, according to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT).

The trust blames “low-lying land reclamation, flood control measures - such as tidal flaps - and obsolete industrial structures like weirs” for destroying and preventing access to eels’ habitat.

In a bid to understand and halt the decline, scientists from the trust have been chipping the eels at Slimbridge on the banks of the river Severn in South Gloucestershire so that they can monitor how they are using the nature reserve and when they return to the sea to breed.

Eels travel thousands of miles across the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea to breed. Their young drift back to Europe where millions end up in the Severn where they mature in freshwater. Traditionally, eels would live out their lives in the Severn Vale wetland before returning to the North Atlantic, but the habitat loss is preventing this for many, according to WWT.

Eel research at WWT Slimbridge

The study is part of a broader eel conservation project being undertaken by WWT in partnership with Bristol Water, aiming to improve eel access around the site, and eventually the wider Severn Vale.

WWT head of reserves management Emma Hutchins said: “As one of the biggest wetland areas within the Severn Estuary under conservation management, Slimbridge is an ideal place to enhance for eels and centre this conservation project.”

 

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