Council goes to court to protect cockle stocks from soaring restaurant demand

A growing demand for cockles in European restaurants has forced a Scottish council to go to court to stop the plundering of shellfish stocks on some of the country's most environmentally important beaches.

For centuries the inhabitants of Fife have been able to wander along the coastline and gather fresh cockles. But a growing taste for the delicacy in restaurants of France and Spain, where carefully collected cockles can fetch a premium price of up to £2,000 a tonne, has prompted fears that industrial harvesting of the shellfish is putting a strain on the environment and future stocks.

At least four companies have moved their operations from the Solway Firth, which was closed to cockling because of fears that the natural resource was being driven to extinction, to Pettycur beach, between Burntisland and Kinghorn in Fife.

However, Fife Council, concerned about the EU-protected foreshore, which is recognised for its importance to birdlife, has called for the Scottish Executive to prohibit the industrial exploitation of shellfish stocks before the new cockle season resumes in September.

Fife Council secured an interim indict against four companies that had been harvesting hundreds of tonnes of cockles a day from the beach. The council wants an environmental study carried out on the possible impact of the cockling on the local wildlife before any more shellfish are removed.

Liz Higgins, a spokeswoman for Fife Council, said: "These harvesters were driven out of the north-east of England and the Solway Firth after concerns were raised about the habitats of birds and the effect of cockling on bird populations.

"They suddenly arrived in Fife and targeted one of our beaches. We have interdicted the companies to stop them crossing the foreshore as they are removing several tonnes a day of cockles and we believe there should be some sort of environmental assessment before they do this. We want to know that what they are doing is sustainable."

The companies turned to the Fife coast after cockle beds on the Solway Firth were devastated by professional suction-dredgers in the 1990s. Although some companies continued to collect the shellfish by hand, a natural collapse in stocks has now forced even these gatherers to look further afield.

"Cockle-gathering is a goldmine in a rural area like the Solway," said Norrie Milligan, chairwoman of Solway Shellfish Hand-operators Federation. "The French are desperate for the product, which is why Solway men are scouring beaches around Scotland for cockles."

The federation backs the ban on suction-dredging, which has been in place in the Solway Firth since 1992.

Ms Higgins said: "It's a potentially very serious situation. There has always been a tradition of people gathering cockles on Fife beaches for their own use for years and this sort of industrial-scale harvesting could put an end to that."