Sumar compares stopping eel fishing to the closure of coal mining: "It is an ecological nonsense"

"Fishing populism," is how Asturian regional deputy of Movimiento Sumar, Xabel Vegas, has described the Principado's refusal to include the eel in the List of Wild Species under Special Protection Regime (LESPRE) as the Ministry for the Ecological Transition wanted. Vegas has accused the regional government of adopting an "enormously irresponsible and denialist stance, which represents a new attack on biodiversity." Vegas has recalled that the scientific evidence on the collapse of the European eel is overwhelming and that the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has been recommending for years that catches be zero. In this regard, he has defended the total prohibition not only of fishing, but also of its commercialization and consumption. "To continue treating the eel as an exploitable resource is an unsustainable fiction. Today, consuming eel is an ecological absurdity equivalent to eating a brown bear stew or a roasted capercaillie," Vegas ruled, ...