The standing committee of the Berne Convention of the Council of Europe has not only been talking about wolves lately. Doubs and apron were also on the agenda. The institution asked the Swiss and French authorities to strengthen their collaboration and continue their work to restore environmental conditions favorable to apron. The progressive and sustainable implementation of the national action plan for the Doubs was welcomed by the Berne Convention. “The Swiss authorities must, however, organize without further delay the agricultural seminar awaited for two years,” NGOs, including Pro Natura and the WWF, said in a press release on Friday. After eight years of absence, the binational group for water quality must be reactivated in 2025 and continue its work. Endangered and highly dependent on the state of the river, the apron is a fish strictly protected by the Berne Convention. “As signatories to this convention, Switzerland and France are required to take the necessary measures to protect it,” we can read in the press release. In 2011, deploring the lack of investigation on the part of the Franco-Swiss authorities to halt the decline of apron in the Doubs, Pro Natura, WWF Switzerland and the Swiss Fishing Federation (FSP), with the help of the collective SOS Loue and Comtois rivers have filed a complaint with the standing committee of the Berne Convention. The NGOs then denounced a possible violation of the convention.
Avoid a disappearance
The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) as well as the cantons of Jura and Neuchâtel announced at the end of November that they will extend the action plan, which aims to improve the ecological state of Doubs, until 2030. It was due to end at the end of the year. Now united around the “Living Doubs” project to move the issue forward, the three Swiss NGOs went to Strasbourg to raise awareness about the critical situation of the apron. Given the results of recent years of monitoring, it is feared that this population is living its final hours. They insisted on the fact that the measures in this plan must come to fruition in the near future in order to avoid the disappearance of the apron and other species dependent on the Doubs. They recalled the need to address all aspects of the watershed that could influence fish, including agricultural and forestry aspects, within the framework of concrete measures. Visual prospecting campaigns took place last year and this year to find the aprons still present in the Doubs. In 2023, the four searches carried out made it possible to find a specimen, which was captured and transferred to an aquarium at Aquatis in Lausanne. This year, none of the three campaigns carried out allowed an apron to be observed. /ATS
Swiss
