As we head into March, the first runs of glass eels and elvers are arriving at the upper Shannon estuary. Soon they will be migrating up the River Shannon along with tributaries of the Shannon estuary. […]
Expert advice on glass eel, elver, yellow eel and silver eel management issues
Author: Dr. Will O'Connor
Dr. Will O’Connor is a Senior Ecologist who has over 25 year’s professional experience. He is a graduate of the University of Wales, Cardiff, and the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and a full member of both the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management and the Institute of Fisheries Management. He is a Chartered Environmentalist and a Chartered Biologist.
Decision regarding ESB eel kill outstanding
A decision on whether to prosecute the ESB over a major kill of critically endangered juvenile European eels (or elvers) at their hydroelectric installation on the River Erne in County Donegal is still outstanding. The […]
Review of ESB’s eel trap and transport programmes
To mitigate for the impacts of their hydropower dams, the ESB runs a number of ‘trap and transport’ schemes for upstream migrating juvenile eels (elvers), and downstream migrating silver eels. However, in this article we […]
Inadequate silver eel mitigation on the Shannon
The River Shannon has a large hydroelectric scheme in its lower reaches, and there are no bypasses for silver eels migrating downstream (or indeed for other fish such as salmon kelts and smolts). The ESB […]
Low elver catches at ESB dams despite upturn
The ESB have released their elver catch results for 2014, and confirm that the “elver run for the Shannon saw 354kg of elvers caught in total“. This is a very poor catch considering that this was […]
Tour of ESB’s and IFI’s elver traps, Summer 2014
In response to our work earlier in the year where we showed that ESB were not operating elver traps on the River Shannon (at either Ardnacrusha or Parteen) by the first week of May, a […]
More comment on IFI’s elver traps
It’s not just the ESB that are at fault in relation to managing and monitoring elver runs in Ireland. Elvers are trapped or monitoring at 10 “index” sites in Ireland as part of the National […]
Major elver kill on River Erne
Further to our reports of incompetence from the ESB in operating elver traps on the River Shannon, we were at least happy to know that elver traps were being operated at the ESB Hydroelectric Station […]
Success in our campaign on the River Shannon
ESB finally commence elver trapping at Ardnacrusha in response to our complaints and exposure of management failures. We would like to confirm that, in response to our campaign on facebook page and our websites, ESB […]
No operating elver traps at Ardnacrusha, May 2014
Further to our previous posts about Ireland’s national elver monitoring stations and traps not being operational, we were genuinely astonished this evening when we visited Ardnacrusha Hydroelectric Station on the Lower River Shannon. Elver traps […]
Sustainable eel management for the River Shannon
I attended attended a meeting of the Sustainable Eel Group (SEG) in London this week, and it is was compelling to hear first-hand about the huge runs of glass eels and elvers in the UK […]
