BART educates children on endangered European eels

Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) hosted an Eels in the Classroom 2025 event in the River Sheppey area, funded by the Wild Trout Trust. This project involves educating children about the critically endangered European eel (Anguilla anguilla), a species which is present but struggling in UK rivers, in both classroom-based and outdoor river-based sessions.

The BART team visited Year 2 at Shepton Mallet Infants’ School and the Key Stage 2 group at Croscombe Primary School. Both classes were involved in classroom workshops learning all about European eels, their life cycles, and the threats they face, and got involved with creating some eel life cycle models using tissue paper.

European eels make an impressive journey from the Sargasso Sea, the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and into our rivers and streams. Young eels, known as elvers, swim upstream where they can live for up to 20 years before swimming back out to sea to spawn, however barriers such as weirs can make migration difficult for them. Additionally, European eels are threatened by factors such as habitat loss, overfishing, and pollution.

The children were taken to their local stretch of the River Sheppey to take part in an exciting session to learn about eel habitat and food. The children took part in a mapping activity, assessing the better and worse features of their local river for eels. They also took part in river dipping, learning to identify freshwater invertebrates, and understand the benefits of invertebrate diversity as a valuable food source for eels.

Children thoroughly enjoyed learning about eels and visiting their local river. They were keen to tell their family and friends all about it, helping spread the word about this fascinating fish in need of help from human impacts.

We’d like to thank the Wild Trout Trust for funding this project.