Illegal trade in caviar involving EU newcomers Bulgaria and Romania poses a significant risk to the highly endangered sturgeons of the Danube River basin, a report alarms.

The two Balkan countries hold the only viable populations of wild sturgeons in the EU, but five of the six native sturgeon species in the Danube are critically endangered because of poaching, the report prepared by wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic warns, as cited by EurActiv.

Five five cases involving a total of 27.5 kg of caviar from Bulgaria and nine incidents yielding 25 kg from Romania have been reported by EU member states, according to Traffic. None of the two neighboring EU newcomers have reported confiscating illegal caviar

"It is of concern that Bulgaria and Romania reported no seizures of caviar, while other EU member states registered several seizures where those two countries were implicated,"  Traffic's Katalin Kecse-Nagy, author of the report, has commented.

"The detected quantities are not very high, but we must bear in mind that the real volume of illegal trade is likely to be considerably higher and any illegal trade poses an unacceptable risk to these highly threatened species," she has added.

The possibility of "laundering" caviar of wild origin (whether from the Danube or elsewhere) via aquaculture operations is to be further nvestigated, the report says.