{"id":170762,"date":"2025-12-06T04:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T04:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/170762\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T04:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T04:49:09","slug":"first-nations-wonder-if-canadas-decision-on-eels-is-best-for-future-of-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/170762\/","title":{"rendered":"First Nations wonder if Canada’s decision on eels is best for future of species"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Canada announced Tuesday it wouldn\u2019t list the American eel under the Species at Risk Act<\/a> (SARA) some First Nations people with cultural and spiritual ties to the species are questioning the decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Right now it doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s long gone,” said Doucette.<\/p>\n

“You’d hear all the stories about people using eels for medicine and feasts and that’s all gone, too.”<\/p>\n

Doucette fished with his father around the Bras d\u2019Or 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"manCharles Doucette is the fisheries director in Potlotek First Nation. (Submitted by Charles Doucette)<\/p>\n

A listing under SARA would trigger automatic legal protections against killing, capturing or harming the species.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Nova Scotia, where debates over eel population health often pit commercial elver harvesters, environmentalists, treaty fishers and Mi\u2019kmaw knowledge keepers against one another, some say population decline is already visible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"EelDoucette said eels used to be plentiful in Cape Breton, N.S., but that’s no longer the case. He worries southern mainland Nova Scotia will soon experience the same loss of population. (Mackenzie Pardy)<\/p>\n

Doucette said people like him and his aunts and uncles \u2013 now in their 80\u2019s \u2014 struggle to find eels to eat in the winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said baked eels with its rich, greasy flesh is more than food, it\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

“It’s just part of their feeling of being Mi\u2019kmaw,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re that connected with eel.”<\/p>\n

Data<\/a> from the Atlantic Canada Conservation Centre says eel populations in Nova Scotia are vulnerable, in Prince Edward Island, imperiled, and in New Brunswick, apparently secure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eel’s decline felt in Kitigan Zibi<\/p>\n

In Kitigan Zibi Anishin\u0101beg, about 150 kilometres north of Ottawa, the number of eels in the community’s traditional waterway, the Ottawa River, has plummeted in the last few decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kristi Leora Gansworth from Kitigan Zibi says her connection to the eel is in her DNA, through her Onondaga father\u2019s eel clan and her mother\u2019s Anishinabe culture where there is historical reliance on eel for medicine, seasonal indicators, and as a food source.<\/p>\n

“I remember hearing stories from elders that you could actually hear the eels moving through the water at night because there were so many,” she said.<\/p>\n

“And that was in living memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"womanKristi Leora Gansworth is an Anishinaabe and Onondaga geography scholar. (Submitted by Kristi Leora Gansworth)<\/p>\n

She said eels in their region, once making up over half of the Ottawa River\u2019s biomass, have declined 99 per cent due to damming and habitat loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these compounding factors have kind of erased eels from our memory,\u201d said Gansworth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gansworth is skeptical whether listing the eel under SARA would be the solution, because of the limitations that would cause for community fishing for ceremonial or cultural purposes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bridging nations \u00a0<\/p>\n

Gansworth said concern for the eels has become a connector bridging Kitigan Zibi and Mi\u2019kma\u2019ki.<\/p>\n

This network\u2019s unofficial name, Eel\u2019s Back, traces its roots to work in the ’90s by late Kitigan Zibi Elder William Commanda, who saw the eel as a critically important species whose health reflected the well being of the Earth and Indigenous nations.<\/p>\n

\"ManJonathan Cote, a guardian from Kitigan Zibi Anishin\u0101beg, holds an eel at a gathering held in Mi’kma’ki in March, to bring together advocates to protect the eel. (Stephany Hildebrand)<\/p>\n

Inspired by Commanda\u2019s efforts, L. Jane McMillan, chair of Anthropology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., helped organize Eel\u2019s Back with members of Commanda\u2019s advocacy efforts.<\/p>\n

The group made up of nations from across North America meet to discuss the eel and look at ways to protect the species while incorporating Indigenous knowledge and self-governance.<\/p>\n

McMillan\u2019s appreciation of eels began through her late partner, Donald Marshall Jr., whose eel fishing case led to the Supreme Court affirming Mi\u2019kmaw treaty rights.<\/p>\n

“I’m surprised. I’m concerned,” she said of the federal decision.<\/p>\n

“I think that there is a claim to have meaningfully consulted, but with whom and in what context are outstanding questions.”<\/p>\n

\"TwoElder and knowledge keeper on eels Kerry Prosper, left, and L. Jane McMillan, who works to bring together people interested in protecting eels. (St. Francis Xavier University)<\/p>\n

McMillan worries about what DFO will do to address habitat alteration, dams, turbines and fisheries management, particularly the elver fishery which she said is extremely destructive to the eel’s life cycle.<\/p>\n

John Couture, senior fisheries advisor with Oceans North, a marine conservation group, said he wasn\u2019t surprised by the non-listing given economic pressures around the high-value elver fishery.<\/p>\n

Listing under SARA would have shut down all harvest \u2013 commercial, ceremonial, recreational and treaty-based.<\/p>\n

Couture believes a compromise would have been not listing under SARA but listing the species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Appendix II. That would have meant measures that would have strengthened traceability and curbed illegal trade.<\/p>\n

Canada voted against this at the CITES World Wildlife Conference at the end of November.<\/p>\n

In a statement to CBC Indigenous, DFO said the decision not to list the eel under SARA considered scientific, socio-economic data and consultations with Indigenous groups, provinces, partners, stakeholders and the Canadian public.<\/p>\n

The statement said managing eel under the Fisheries Act will be most effective for conserving the species while preserving the economical benefit to all Canadians.<\/p>\n

It said the American eel doesn\u2019t meet the Appendix II criteria laid out by CITES, which requires a 70 per cent population decline to be listed, citing a 2024 national science review<\/a> that said eel abundance across Canada has remained \u201crelatively stable\u201d for two decades.<\/p>\n

International scope<\/p>\n

Marine biologist Shelley Denny, senior advisor at the Unama\u2019ki Institute of Natural Resources, has studied eels throughout her career with a particular interest in the Mi\u2019kmaw cultural connection to eel and its roles in food, medicine, spirituality and economy.<\/p>\n

Denny, who is Mi\u2019kmaw from Potlotek, is wary of a SARA listing and its potential implication for that Mi\u2019kmaw connection to the eel.<\/p>\n

“It would literally put everything in the hands of the government,” said Denny.<\/p>\n

\"WomanShelley Denny is a marine biologist who studies eels and their significance to Mi’kmaw culture and spirituality. (Brian MacKay\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Denny instead believes attention should shift toward industries contributing to habitat loss, particularly in Ontario and Quebec where hydroelectric dam turbines kill large numbers of eels.<\/p>\n

She also advocates for international co-ordination in managing the species, as it crosses international waters to spawn in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just one country or one group of people that can solve this problem,” said Denny.<\/p>\n

“Let’s think about how we can all contribute to eel conservation and sustainable fishing practices.”<\/p>\n

DFO said management measures for the 2026 elver season, including the total allowable catch, will be announced next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Canada announced Tuesday it wouldn\u2019t list the American eel under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-170762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}