Conservation news
Potential increase in illegal trade in European eels following Brexit
The range of the European eel Anguilla anguilla includes most of Europe, North Africa and western Asia. The species has declined dramatically and in 2007 it was included on Appendix II of CITES, regulating all international trade. In 2008 it was categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. In 2010 the EU banned all imports and ex- ports of European eel, but regulated trade within the EU re- mained possible. Brexit—the withdrawal of the UK from the EU—means that as of 1 January 2021 three of the four nations that make up theUKare no longer part of the EUsinglemar- ket. Northern Ireland is the only nation still included. The most important wild-caught eel fisheries in Europe are on LoughNeagh in Northern Ireland; c. 300 t is caught annually and 80% of this is exported to the Netherlands to meet the demand for smoked eel. The Lough Neagh fishery depends on restocking with glass eels (juveniles) in the lake as recruit- ment is insufficient to meet the demand for fully grown eels. In the past decades, 1–2 t of glass eels were supplied annually fromEngland andWales. Currently there is no legal glass eel fishery in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that couldmeet this requirement.With the threeUKnations hav- ing left the EU single market there is no legal option for the UK glasseel fisheries toexporttoLough Neaghor any other part of theEUsinglemarket, as theEUdoesnot allowthe im- port of eels from third countries, until at least the end of 2021. For the LoughNeagh eel fisheries to remainviable, up to 2 t
of glasseelswillhavetobeimportedfromother partsofthe
EU.France andSpainare themost likelycountries for sourcing these imports. If thismaterializes then the trade of wild-caught eel from Lough Neagh to the Netherlands can continue. TheUKglass eel fisherywill lose almost all of its legalmar-
ket supplying Lough Neagh and other parts of the EU for farming and restocking purpose. In the absence of significant domestic eel farming this leaves the glass eel fishers without a
market.Demand for glass eels is high outside the EU, in par- ticular in China and other parts of East Asia. This demand has been met in part by a substantial illegal trade, so much that the illegal eel trade fromthe EU is itsmost important il- legal wildlife trade in terms of monetary value (glass eels are traded for c. EUR 900/kg on the illegal European market). We are concerned that an oversupply of glass eels in the UKand the high demand in East Asia will lead to an increase in illegal trade between these two regions.
FLORIAN M. STEIN (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000- 0003-1049-4537) Institut für Geoökologie, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany E-mail
fstein.seg@
gmail.com
VINCENT NIJMAN (
orcid.org/0000-0002-5600-4276) Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY 4.0
Rediscovery of Brachystelmaparviflorumafter 186 years
Brachystelma is a genus of .100 species in the Apocynaceae family found in Africa, Asia and Australia, with the majority found in South Africa. It includes many rare, endemic and threatened species, some of which have not been observed since the collection of their type specimens and have therefore been presumed extinct. Of the 38 species known from India, three are considered extinct: B. attenuatum, B. pauciflorum and B. parviflorum. Brachystelma parviflorum (Wight) Hook. f. was first collected by John Forbes Royle in 1835 from Doongie (Dungi, now in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh). On the basis of Royle’s collection, Robert Wight described it under the genus Eriopetalum Wight. Later on, J.D. Hooker described this species under Brachystelma on the basis of the same collection and an illustration attached to the same herbarium sheet. While working on the conservation of the endemic and
threatened plants of the Western Himalaya, we collected a specimen of Brachystelma from Badhani village in Hamirpur district, Himachal Pradesh on 18 April 2020. The plant material was brought to the Botanical Survey of India, Dehradun, and in August 2020 it was identified as B. parviflorum confirming the rediscovery of this pre- sumed extinct species after c. 186 years. As the new collec- tion locality is c. 5 km from the type locality, the species appears to be a point endemic. We observed only a few individuals in a restricted locality, suggesting the species is rare and should probably be categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Because of the lack of taxonomic details on the original protologue and the type specimen, further study of this species is required. We plan to explore the original location further, to gather data for a formal categorization using the IUCN Red List criteria.
AMBER SRIVASTAVA (
orcid.org/0000-0003-3018-5176) Botanical Survey of India, Dehradun, India E-mail
ambersri108@gmail.com
NISHANT CHAUHAN Department of Geography, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY 4.0
Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 329–333 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000119
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