(ANSA) - Police in northern Italy warned on Tuesday that "an army" of poachers from Eastern Europe is swooping over the Po River netting vast amounts of fish.
According to environmentalists, teams of up to 20 'fishermen' scour the river with nets to haul in hundreds of thousands of euros worth of fish.
They claim that the poachers freeze and pack the fish and then ship it home. There it is repackaged and "exported" to Italy, where it is sold to restaurants and shops. Police say the poachers have been sighted in seven locations along the Po, which flows 652 kilometers from west to east across northern Italy.
The poachers rely on ten boats and twenty campers equipped with freezers, say the environmentalists who report that in some areas of the Po fish life has dropped by as much as 70%.
