Recreational anglers fishing for catfish: the video that tells the story of the activity in Avigliana.

The Protected Areas of the Cozie Alps have created a video to tell the story of the involvement of amateur fishermen in controlling the wels catfish from the waters of the Avigliana Lakes Natural Park. This is an initiative organized in the year 2025 by the staff of the Park Authority as part of the European project Life Predator to combat the spread of Silurus glanis, an invasive alien aquatic predator that threatens to compromise the aquatic biodiversity of water bodies in southern Europe. Being an international project, the video has been made available in Italian (available here) and in English (available here).

During the summer and autumn, park rangers coordinated a series of night fishing sessions in the Lago Grande di Avigliana to remove biomass of wels catfish from the basin. The protagonists of the video are the park rangers and the fishermen who personally share their motivations and the spirit with which they participated in the project. In particular, the need to contain the wels catfish with a variety of approaches for greater effectiveness emerges. The involvement of amateur fishermen, in fact, serves to create a sensitivity around the issues raised by the presence of the predator, forming a network of individuals that operate during the sessions, but also in their recreational fishing activities, reporting catches to the park rangers and actively committing to the project's goals.

The initiative was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Metropolitan City of Turin, which granted exceptions for fishing activities, normally prohibited at night, and the Municipality of Avigliana, which ensured the closure of the walking path during the fishermen's operations.