|
Funny you posted that today, Just yesterday I wrote to Marsha Bell of the USF&WS asking about the status of the eel petition. I've said all along that I don't think they are going to list them as either threatened or endangered. But if they do, it's going to happen in a hurry at this point. I have no idea what has delayed them acting on the petition, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it's not to provide more time for study. By law they have to act on the petition. In other cases they have said that the declined to list the species because not enough is known to warrant a listing. They could do that with eels, but that's not the same as deferring a decision on the peition. If they were to take action on the petition (which is overdue at this point) it would have almost immediate effect, and we could kiss the eels goodbye for next season and a lot of season thereafter. As I said, I don't expect that to happen, but if it did happen it would definately affect eels availabilty next season.
|