A European UN fishery advisory body must stop promoting predator control without evidence
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Biodiversity - Flyways
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Biodiversity - Swimways
We oppose recommendations recently endorsed by this UN fishery advisory body, seeking to expand the control of protected predators such as great cormorants, herons and seals across Europe without scientific evidence. These proposals risk undermining conservation safeguards despite ongoing uncertainty about their contribution to fish population declines and the effectiveness of reducing size of predator populations.
We strongly condemn the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s European Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture Advisory Commission (EIFAAC) for promoting European-level predator control and streamlined wildlife-control derogations before demonstrating that these measures will deliver the claimed benefits.
Its recommendations, endorsed on 8 October 2026, support their own European cormorant management framework and promote the extension of this approach to herons and seals while acknowledging that research must still establish the relative importance of predation and the effectiveness of interventions. Although they formally require compliance with EU conservation legislation, making control easier before resolving these questions risks weakening safeguards in practice.
The evidence underpinning this agenda demands independent scrutiny before it becomes policy. Critical assessments of Ian Cowx’s 2026 review on ecological and economic effects of predators on freshwater fish identify plenty of inaccuracies, weaknesses in its extrapolation from local impacts to continent-scale conclusions, the lack of transparency and exaggerations of its economic-loss estimates, as well as the lack of evidence that predator removal restores fish populations. This continues the unfortunate trend established by the Framework for a European Cormorant Management Plan, prepared by Ian Cowx with Niels Jepsen and Raymon Van Anrooy, which has also attracted substantial criticism in EIFAAC’s own consultation records.
Respondents identified inadequate scientific referencing, reliance on self-reported stakeholder estimates, unsupported causal links between predation and fish declines, and unjustified extrapolation from local conflicts to continental management. Despite these criticisms and the lack of adoption by the competent European and national conservation authorities responsible for the management of the Great Cormorant, EIFAAC is moving forward de facto implementing the plan.
Several provisions of the work plan of the EIFAAC’s Cormorant Management Advisory Group move beyond neutral technical support towards advocacy and determination of the management of a protected species. Therefore, Wetlands International Europe declined EIFAAC’s invitation to take part in this process deemed illegitimate.
EIFAAC’s push for extended predator control across Europe sits uneasily with FAO’s own guidance, which emphasises coexistence, case-specific responses, rigorous evidence and an understanding of the social and ecological causes of conflict. EIFAAC is an advisory fisheries and aquaculture body, not an authority mandated to manage protected wildlife or to lobby for relaxing their legal protection. Its own mandate requires precaution and biodiversity safeguards. It should support affected fisheries through credible research, not use its institutional standing to press for easier control of protected wildlife based on dubious evidence.
We remain committed to the conservation of waterbirds and fish alike, while understanding the need to tackle conflicts through science-based solutions. This vision shall be defended in the appropriate processes and fora, such as the upcoming structured dialogue aimed at addressing national challenges in managing conflicts with the Great Cormorant populations organised by the European Commission in November 2026.