One of the world's most bizarre creatures is vanishing. Freshwater eel populations began crashing worldwide in the 1980s. The decline has been rapid, and scientists think eels are probably succumbing to a variety of ills, including overfishing, habitat loss, pollution, and eel-chewing hydropower turbines. The European eel (Anguil-la anguilla) is a prime exam-ple. The number of its young has dropped by perhaps as much as 99% in 20 years, and the conservation group In- ternational Union for Con- servation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the eel as critically endangered. Now, another potential threat to some Eu-ropean eel populations has emerged, according to re- search published in ES&T (pp 4607-4612).
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