The Fish and Wildlife Service should be commended for its crackdown on illegal glass eel harvesting, which may have gained a lot of recent attention but in fact has gone back many years.   It should also be noted that fishermen worked closely with the state of Maine to implement a variety of measures during the past five years to improve the integrity of this fishery.  

Not surprisingly, the American eel fishery has its fair share of detractors, whose stated goal is to end any and all harvest activities.   They have spent twenty five years making dire predictions of a rangewide stock collapse, which has simply not materialized.

Two decisions by the Fish and Wildlife Service in the past ten years have found that the American Eel species is neither endangered nor threatened with endangerment.   The public should be pleased that our state and federal regulators are working hard to find the appropriate balance between economic exploitation and conservation of this valuable resource.