AN ambitious project to revive the fortunes of one of Severnside's most mysterious and now endangered fish – the eel – has been kickstarted by a mass release in front of the Forest children who helped raise them and some of the countries top chefs.

The restocking programme is the brainchild of Richard Cook of the Severn and Wye Smokery at Chaxhill.

Having grown up in the Severnside village, he's funded tanks which have gone out to Forest schools, universities and Slimbridge.

This week's release was from 20 tanks amounting to about 2,000 glass eels, named as such because: "They're like threads of glass, completely transparent."

Next year, says Richard: "My goal is to do 100 tanks, meaning we could have about 160,000 fish ready to go into the water."

The inspiration for the project came from Richard's early days at Walmore Hill primary school.

"Although we're in an agricultural area, nobody taught us about the river and the fisheries on our doorstep. No one told us there was an important, indeed vital, glass eel fishery right here."

The Severn and Wye elver fisheries have historically been one of the most important, if not the most important, in the UK. Rocketing sales to Spanish and Mediterranean traders – where elvers are a prized delicacy – led to the notorious 'elver wars' in the 1980s.

There are a number of strands to Richard's scheme, namely

•Support for a sustainable fishery on the river.

•Education: "Children can take so much from this, learn so much from this."

•Healthy water: "The eel is a great barometer of water qua­lity. We've got to highlight the importance of water, it's an incredibly valuable natural resource and we need to teach children about pollution and contamination.

This year primary schools received 11 tanks of 300 elvers, among them Westbury on Severn, Highnam, Minsterworth and Walmore Hill School. The children feed the elvers twice a week for about eight to 10 weeks, before they're ready for release.

After between seven and 15 years the elvers will be mature enough to make their way down to the Severn for the remarkable oceanic journey to the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean, where they'll breed. In the spring, the elvers return.