The EU would rather destroy the planet than let Brexit succeed

Ecologists highlight keystone species – those critical to the survival of many others. And there couldn’t be a much more important one than the sand eel, because sand eels are essential to the diet of some of our most charismatic British sea birds, particularly the kittiwake and the puffin. Both are red listed endangered species, now also because bird flu has hit them badly in recent years.

Perhaps of even more critical importance is the role of sand eels in feeding the Atlantic Salmon. If salmon disappear from our rivers it won’t just spell the end of the traditional Scottish sporting holiday. It could remove from our riparian and estuarine ecosystems the salmon and sea trout on which dozens of other species depend: birds from dippers and kingfishers all the way up to ospreys and white tailed eagles, and mammals such as otters and seals. It would be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions for British biodiversity if, as many now fear, the wild salmon becomes extinct.

There has been a huge research effort to understand the factors behind the salmon’s rapid decline. And the period when salmon smolts first hit saltwater has been identified as critical. The science shows that 99.7 per cent of their diet at this very vulnerable stage comprises sand eels. Like the kittiwake’s and the puffin’s, the salmon’s survival is linked to sand eel numbers, which have been in decline.

So the British government has been absolutely right to use the powers over fisheries policy repatriated to it by Brexit to impose a ban on fishing for sand eels in our national waters around the Dogger Bank in the North Sea. But in an extraordinary twist to the Brexit story, their freedom to act to save our sea birds and migratory fish has been challenged by the EU, apparently on behalf of Scandinavian fishermen, and a litigious stalemate has ensued.

In an interview just a few days ago, Nigel Farage, a keen angler, revealed that his primary motive for entering politics all those years ago had been a desire to combat the damage done to the aquatic environment by the Common Fisheries Policy. This dispute throws into sharp relief the Brexiteer narrative about the EU being on the side of big business’s vested interests against nature.

In the short term it is vital that this seemingly esoteric issue is resolved to save our iconic species and to have a more constructive relationship with our ex-partners in Europe. Longer term, mankind must find a better way than robbing the seas of sand eels.

Meanwhile the silence from “environmental” activists on the Left is deafening.