📋 Tender Overview
Start Date: 01/09/2022
End Date: 31/08/2027
Total Eligible Budget: 2,847,410 €
EU Contribution: 1,708,444 €
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Native to eastern Europe and western Asia, the wels catfish (Silurus glanis) is now established in many countries outside its native range. In Mediterranean countries, where temperatures are more favourable, it is considered highly invasive, threatening native fish and other biodiversity, mostly through predation and competition. This catfish is the largest freshwater fish species in Europe and in the introduced range, with adults at least twice as large as native predators. It is highly adaptable, capable of catching and ingesting a wide range of prey, long lived and fast growing. S. glanis also carries pests and diseases that may adversely impact native fish. Due to its large size, very fast metabolism and aggressive behaviour during the spawning period, the species has a great advantage compared to native top predators. By feeding on previously unexploited resources, such as terrestrial prey and larger native fishes, the catfish can alter ecosystem food webs by creating new links between groups of organisms or via novel predation pressure, often adapting easily to new local conditions.
While the species’ distribution in Italian rivers is well known, few studies have been conducted in lakes. Nevertheless, harvest data from commercial fisheries show a dramatic increase of the species in the last 5-10 years. In Portugal, the catfish was first introduced in 2008 in the Tagus River but it is now present in other sites, too. Although information on catfish abundance in reservoirs (i.e. lentic habitats) is still scarce, data from fishers’ and anglers’ records, as well as from recent field surveys, show a substantial expansion of the catfish.
The pre-operational context of LIFE PREDATOR has been chosen to include lakes with different morphological characteristics (depth and size), different stages of colonisation and different levels of catfish abundance, including lakes where the species has not yet been reported but is likely to be present in the near future.
The project area includes 23 lakes in northern Italy, 25 reservoirs (artificial lakes) in Portugal and 2 in Czechia (50 in total), divided in 4 types, according to their area and depth.
