Russia intends to establish a state caviar monopoly and crack down even harder on poachers to save the sturgeon population fromextinction, a Russian state official revealed in January.

Caviar, produced from the sturgeon’s delicate eggs, commands such high prices on the international market that poaching threatens to kill off the ‘tsar fish’ for good. State control over illegal harvesting has weakened considerably since the break-up of the Soviet Union, while pollution is also major factor in the drastic decline of the sturgeon population. Most of the world’s sturgeon spawn in rivers that flow into the Caspian Sea, but numbers of the highly coveted beluga sturgeon, for example, have fallen off by 90 percent in the past two decades, according to one Russian estimate.

Photo: Reuters

State officials have been toying with the idea of creating a state caviar monopoly for years, but 2008 could see a draft law brought up for debate, according to Andrei Krainiy, Russia’s head of fisheries. “The idea of a monopoly has been introduced into the draft law—of state regulation of the whole process, from nurturing sturgeon to processing and sale,” Krainiy was quoted in the Russian media. “This does not mean that the private sector will have no place, but it means the state will control all of the processes very strictly.”

By placing the caviar production process strictly in state hands, Russia hopes to prevent poachers and gangs, often heavily armed, fromjoining with corrupt officials that bring illegal product to market. Krainy has also mentioned implanting electronic chips to monitor fish numbers and location.