First Nations wonder if Canada's decision on eels is best for future of species
CBC
After Canada announced Tuesday it wouldn’t list the American eel under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) some First Nations people with cultural and spiritual ties to the species are questioning the decision.
"Right now it doesn’t seem hopeful because we don't see anything being done to help them," said Charles Doucette, fisheries director with Potlotek First Nation on Cape Breton Island.
Doucette has vivid memories of his dad coming home with a load of eels to hang in the basement to dry, preparing them to give to family and friends.
"That’s long gone," said Doucette.
"You'd hear all the stories about people using eels for medicine and feasts and that's all gone, too."
Doucette fished with his father around the Bras d’Or Lakes and areas in southern Cape Breton, but he said those lakes are now nearly empty of eel, which is why he questions the decision not to list the American eel under the Species at Risk Act.
American eel was assessed as "threatened" by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada in 2012 but for 13 years the federal government would not decide whether to list it as a species at risk.
A listing under SARA would trigger automatic legal protections against killing, capturing or harming the species.
Instead the federal government says it will continue managing eel populations under the Fisheries Act, a decision commercial elver (juvenile eel) fishers in Atlantic Canada are applauding.
In Nova Scotia, where debates over eel population health often pit commercial elver harvesters, environmentalists, treaty fishers and Mi’kmaw knowledge keepers against one another, some say population decline is already visible.
Doucette said people like him and his aunts and uncles – now in their 80’s — struggle to find eels to eat in the winter.
He said baked eels with its rich, greasy flesh is more than food, it’s identity.
"It's just part of their feeling of being Mi’kmaw," he said.
"We're that connected with eel."
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