Species At Risk: American Eel

General Information

The American eel lives in an aquatic ecosystem, more specifically; saltwater and freshwater areas. The American eel can access Ontario by any salt or freshwater connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The biome(s) that the American eel lives in are the Oceans, Lakes and Rivers, most of the aquatic biomes. The American eel’s ecological niche is a consumer. It is also a heterotroph and a secondary consumer in its food chain.

Level of Risk

This species of eel is endangered, which is the third worse level of risk for any animal.

The Factors That Led to Their Current Status

Some biotic factors that are posing threats on the American eel are the invasive species. These can pose a threat to the American eel because invasive fish and aquatic animals can eat the eel’s food making them starve and die. If an invasive plant gets introduced into the eel’s habitat, the food that the eels are eating would have already eaten that and then that plant gets transferred to the eel, this is an example of biomagnification. The eel also has a lot of human impacts that are posing major threats on the eel. Two major impacts are the building of dams and turbines. These pose threats because they try to go through the turbines and end up dying. Then the dams are terrible because when the eel’s are trying to migrate, they can’t pass through these and then they can’t meet with other’s to breed and reproduce. Another threat that isn’t as bad anymore is fishing. This was bad because before it was illegal to fish and kill these eel’s they were getting majorly fished and killed. Now it there is not as much fishing as before because it is illegal but some of it still happens because it is not very heavily monitored. One last biotic/abiotic is climate change and the changes it makes to the ocean. These changes include the rise of the temperature in the ocean and the stream patterns.

What is being done to change the species status

The first thing being done is to restore the access to the American eels’ habitat. This is going to be done by increase the habitat access by 10% every 5 years. The second thing is restoring and enhancing the eels’ habitats. The next thing is ensuring that people like scientists and First Nations and even some of the general public about the efforts of trying to save the eels. There are many more things being done in the next 100 or so years, but these are just the recent efforts to save the eels.

What Government, Indigenous, NGO or private organization initiative is in place to support the recovery/removal of the pecies at risk: The Ontario government and the Canadian Eel Working Group are supporting the recovery of the American Eel.