EU proposes international trade regulations on all eel species
The European Union has proposed making all eel species, including the Japanese eel, subject to trade regulations under an international convention.
The EU and other countries, including the Dominican Republic, submitted the proposal on Friday to the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The convention regulates international trade in endangered species. The EU calls for all non-listed eel species to be subject to trade controls under the pact.
Parties to the convention will discuss the proposal at a meeting in Uzbekistan starting in November.
If they approve the proposal, international trade in the eel species will come under the regulations, which require exporting countries to issue permits.
A series of moves have been made to strengthen protection of eels. Parties to the convention made the European eel subject to the regulations in 2009. In 2016, they adopted a proposal by the EU to conduct a study of the global eel trade. The EU cited a lack of transparency in such trade.
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On Ireland's Peat Bogs, Climate Action Clashes with Tradition
CLONBULLOGUE, Ireland (Reuters) — As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat — the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century. The painstaking work of 'footing turf,' as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell. But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland's biggest emitters of planet-warming gases. As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc's environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticize as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality. 'The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf … They don't know what it's like to live in rural Ireland,' Smyth said. 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