CITES cancels new requirements for eel trade

On January 3, the CITES Secretariat announced that it would not proceed with new trade requirements for American eel because the Dominican Republic had withdrawn its request that Anguilla rostrata be added to CITES Appendix III, which would have required an export permit for eels from the Dominican Republic and certificates of origin for exports from other countries.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) issued the Notification to the Parties just four days before the new requirement was to take effect on the 7th.

Juvenile eels (called “elvers” or “glass eels”) are caught in North and Central American rivers and shipped live to China to be raised on farms. Much of the resulting product is exported to Japan, which has a special day on which the eels are traditionally eaten to ward off fatigue in the summer. In 2026, the Midsummer Day of the Ox (Doyo-no Ushi-no Hi) falls on July 29.

Japanese eels (Anguilla japonica) were originally used, but as the stock declined, mainly due to the channelization and damming of rivers, the similar European and American eels were substituted. The EU has banned the export of the European species (Anguilla anguilla). In the USA, the state of Maine is the main supplier of American eels. In the Caribbean, Haiti and the Dominican Republic have emerged as sources, but illegal harvesting and trade has also boomed.

In October 2025, the Government of the Dominican Republic, through its Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture (CODOPESCA), submitted a request to the CITES Secretariat to include the American eel in Appendix III of CITES — which would require export permits for international trade of this species.

However, around December 19, 2025, the Dominican government withdrew that request, saying that it had revised its position after careful reconsideration of the impacts on local fisheries and coastal communities that depend on the trade.

The EU had supported the measure, as smuggling of European eels is harder to detect due to trade in the “look-alike” species of American and Japanese eels. The European eel has been listed on CITES Appendix II since 2009. The Japanese eel and American eel are listed as “Endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), but are not listed under CITES.

Under CITES rules, a non-threatened species can be listed if it resembles a protected species so closely that leaving it unlisted would undermine enforcement. Eels are the textbook example, since the three different species are so visually similar in trade that it is practically impossible for customs officers or inspectors to distinguish them.

Glass eels of different species are nearly indistinguishable by eye, and processed eel such as fillets or kabayaki cannot be identified visually at all. DNA testing is required, but this is impractical for routine border enforcement. Thus, if one eel is listed and others are not, the listing becomes unenforceable. Traders can mislabel European eel as American or Japanese eel.

However, the United States and Japan assert that not all eel species have the same population trends, so management should be species-specific.