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Caviar - Source: Reuters
After more than 200 million years, sturgeon are losing a battle
for survival to poachers who have hunted the queens of caviar to
the verge of extinction, a leading environmental group said.
Stocks of sturgeon, known in Russia as the Tsar fish, have
collapsed since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union as poachers and
criminal gangs spirit the delicate eggs from the Caspian Sea to
gourmet diners across Europe, Asia and the United States.
Shady traders routinely visit offices in Moscow to sell illegal
black caviar, even though Russia has banned exports since 2002 and
only allows sales of about nine tonnes of wild black caviar on the
home market each year.
The Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) said that 85% of sturgeon were at a very high risk of
extinction in the wild.
It classified 17 of the 27 sturgeon species as critically
endangered.
"This is the last chance. There is no time left. These fish are at
death's door," said Professor Ellen Pikitch, executive director of
the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook
University in New York.
"Sturgeon are just one step away from being extinct in the wild,"
Pikitch told Reuters from Doha where the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species met this
week.
Joint study
Most of the sturgeon left in the wild spawn in the rivers that flow
into the Caspian, a region dominated by Iran and Russia.
The Russian tsars created a monopoly for the sale of caviar and the
Soviet authorities kept tight control over the business.
In the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, the
sturgeon was left largely at the mercy of rampant poaching and
rising pollution.
"The situation with sturgeon is simply catastrophic," said
Alexander Savelyev, a spokesman for Russia's Federal Fishery
Agency.
"The sturgeon is on the edge of extinction."
"We are proposing revolutionary measures, including strict state
control over caviar sales," he said.
The statements follow a joint study by US and Kazakh scientists of
the Ural River which flows into the Caspian and where tens of
thousands of sturgeon once spawned.
It showed fishing catches are four to five times higher than levels
that would allow the Beluga sturgeon to simply survive at today's
vastly reduced population levels.
Some species, such as the Beluga sturgeon which produces highly
prized, delicate grey caviar, have seen a 93% decline in catches,
according to researchers.
The Beluga can grow to more than five metres long, weigh up to a
tonne and sometimes live for more than 100 years.
Caviar can make up about one ninth of a mature female's body
weight.
Illegal black caviar sells in Moscow markets for about $US1,400 a
kilogram and was advertised for sale on some European internet
sites for about $US5,000 per kg.
Russia is pushing Caspian nations such as Iran - which dominates
the market for black caviar - to agree later this month to a
10-year ban on sturgeon fishing to save the sturgeon.
"Sturgeon have survived dramatic change over the past 250 million
years only to face the serious threat of becoming extinct as a
direct result of human activities," said Mohammad Pourkazemi,
chairman of the IUCN's Sturgeon Specialist Group.
"Illegal catch, over-fishing, the breaking up of the migratory
routes and pollution are the key elements that have driven almost
all species to the brink of extinction," he said in a
statement.
