WILDLIFE Agency wants beluga sturgeon to be added to endangered list

If the federal government lists the fish as endangered, all trade and sale of beluga caviar in the U.S. will stop.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Say bye-bye to beluga caviar.
With the holiday season upon us, the buffet tables of the best hosts and hostesses may be seeing one of the last seasons of the beluga sturgeon, whose eggs are the delicacy better known as caviar.
The Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed to add the beluga sturgeon (Huso huso), which now numbers in the thousands, to its list of endangered animals.
At a public hearing set for Thursday in suburban Arlington, Va., the issue of whether the ultimate delicacy can be preserved only by being made deliciously unavailable will be debated by industry aficionados such as Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Inc., an importer and a producer; the Sturgeon Production Group, experts in sturgeon aquaculture; and representatives from Caviar Emptor, a coalition of environmentalists.
Final decision
The federal government has until July 31, 2003, to make a final determination on whether to "list" the fish as endangered, which would stop all trade and sale of beluga caviar in the United States. Trade in beluga has been governed since 1998 by an international treaty called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which requires import and export permits and limits shipments. Despite this protection, the number of beluga has decreased, creating gastronomic peril for what the Interior Department calls the "most economically valuable fish in the world."
The drive to get the species -- which is as old as the dinosaurs -- listed as endangered came from Caviar Emptor, which filed a lawsuit in the spring to get the Fish and Wildlife Service to pay attention to the issue. The group, whose members include the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council and SeaWeb, asked for an emergency listing of the fish to protect it from spring fishing, which begins in March.
"It's no surprise that the current administration isn't banging down the door to list new species, but it's not unusual to go to court to list a species," said Lisa Speer, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is something we can do to help prevent this species from going extinct. We love to consume beluga caviar as a luxury product, but we are driving the species into oblivion."
Declining population
The fish and its valuable roe are found in the Caspian and Black seas, spawning in the rivers that are the drainage basements of the seas, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service proposal. The population of the fish has declined about 90 percent over the past two decades, according to environmental groups. This makes the product even more precious to gourmands who are willing to pay $1,500 a pound or so on the U.S. market, which has the biggest appetite for the eggs. The global caviar trade is estimated to be $100 million a year, with illegal trade at least 10 times that amount.
Over the years, the sturgeon fishery around the Caspian Sea, which also produces sevruga and ossetra caviar, has been damaged by damming, poaching, pollution and overfishing. In the rush to harvest as much roe as possible, "many female beluga sturgeon will never reach a size or age that yields peak egg production, and may have only spawned once prior to harvest," explains the encyclopedic background information included in the agency's proposal.
Life was better for the beluga under the czarist regime and the old Soviet Union, which strictly regulated the fishery. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the many countries that now export Caspian caviar have their own rules and degrees of enforcement. A flourishing black market trade features falsified documents and smuggling the small containers in suitcases.
Roe rows
The "caviar wars" have been raging in this country, with enforcement agents snaring traffickers who violate import rules. For example, Arkady Panchernikov, an owner of Caviar Russe, a Madison Avenue caviar bar, pleaded guilty earlier this month to illegally importing caviar. His business handled some 60 percent of caviar consumed in the United States in the past four years.
When the dire straits of the beluga sturgeon caught the attention of environmental groups, they enlisted the aid of scientists and chefs to support the petition. Some 70 chefs and seafood buyers have signed on to the proposed ban; some American chefs in the best restaurants have taken Caspian caviar off the menu and replaced it with American varieties, such as the California white sturgeon.
Sturgeon farmers
Companies that farm sturgeon worry that an outright ban on beluga will hurt their fledgling industry, which would like to farm beluga in this country.
Charles Chapman, a marine biologist at the University of Florida, supports farming beluga to reduce imports and protect the fish. He predicts an endangered status for Beluga will "really take the fish to extinction. Poaching will increase, and fishermen will take everything they can."