Caviar hunters push sturgeon to ‘extinction's edge’

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Michael Stott and Philippa Fletcher (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 on Thursday. Stocks of sturgeon, known in Russia as the “Czar 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 9 tonnes of wild black caviar on the home market each year. The Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said on Thursday that 85 percent 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. … “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 U.S. 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 percent decline in catches, according to researchers. … Illegal black caviar sells in Moscow markets for about $635 per lb ($1,400 a kilogram) and was advertised for sale on some European internet sites for about $2,250 a lb ($5,000 per kg). …

Caviar hunters push sturgeon to “extinction’s edge”