Richard Fleming (@richardfleming)

I certainly did Pam. Peter Wood is the elver exporter making millions from selling elvers to Russia so very keen to justify the trade and the Guardian should have made this clear. Much of what he says in that letter is not true. I have plenty of evidence that the lagoons are badly polluted, that the Russians actually say that they plan to catch and eat all the eels that grow there and that the restocking therefore appears not to have any conservation value whatsoever. To call these lagoons pristine habitat is utterly absurd. The First Minister of Kaliningrad has said he hopes the catch of eels in the lagoons will rise from 15 tonnes pa to 400. That is the plan for the exported UK elvers.