From time to time, the public and academic debate regarding the status of the European eel resurfaces in the media, often accompanied by strong assertions that the species is close to extinction, or even already extinct in the wild. While such claims are not new and have appeared repeatedly over the past decades, their periodic re-emergence continues to generate confusion and polarisation in discussions on eel conservation and management. Such claims and the reactions they generate are generally disproportionate and, in some cases, irresponsible, particularly when the scientific basis of these statements is not made explicit.

In response to the most recent wave of such messages, and following a direct request from the representatives of a Basque angling association, Willem Dekker of the Sustainable Eel Group has prepared the letter below, in which he revisits the evidence available in the scientific literature and examines how extinction risk has been framed, assessed, and communicated in the media. The letter seeks to disentangle a well-documented, long-term decline in abundance – which is serious and undisputed, and can be traced back to the nineteenth century – from the much stronger and more specific claim that the European eel is facing an imminent risk of extinction, which, according to the author, has never been subjected to a comprehensive and species-specific extinction-risk assessment.

Particular attention is given to the interpretation of the IUCN Red List classification for the European eel, or A. anguilla, especially the way in which criteria based on prolonged rates of decline have been conflated in public debate with criteria that relate to very small population sizes or extremely restricted distributions. The author argues that this conflation has played a significant role in the recurring portrayal of the eel as ‘nearly extinct’, despite the fundamentally different meanings and management implications of these criteria. In the scientific community, these meanings are well-established, so there is a sense these arguments are being made without consulting the individuals engaged either in conducting research, or in developing the methodologies to make it possible.

Against this background, Dekker’s letter cautions that reviving an exaggerated extinction narrative risks diverting attention away from the central challenge facing eel conservation today: the incomplete and uneven implementation of the EU Eel Regulation and related protection measures, which were agreed precisely to address the multiple, interacting pressures on the eel stock across Europe. The letter is published here in full, as received, as a contribution to an ongoing and periodically renewed discussion, and as an invitation to ground future debate more firmly in scientific precision and policy reality.

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