"On Wednesday, we took 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of perch, pike, bream, roach and gudgeon from the Ne River, which is 60 kilometres (40 miles) long and normally has a depth of around a meter (three feet)," said Pierre Girondeau, in charge of the operation near Chateaubernard, 130 kilometresmiles) north of Bordeaux.

"Last week, the wardens took 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of fish from pools that were often no more than 30 centimetres (a foot) deep," he added.

A week later, most of the Ne was dry.

The wardens use a pole with a wire connected to a battery, and a copper ring on the end that goes in the water.

The electroshock stuns the fish, which are then scooped up in nets, placed in tanks of water with oxygen bubbling through it, and transferred by truck to the Charente River, several kilometres (miles) away.

"They're flapping around again after half an hour," Girondeau said.

The Ne, which is a tributary of the Charente, lost many of its fish in 2002 due to an accidental discharge of arsenic, and Girondeau is looking ahead to restocking it once its water levels have come back up.

But he says the Ne is drier now than in the summer of 2003, when extreme heat killed 15,000 people in France -- a summer that was hotter than any in more than 100 years of record-keeping, and perhaps the hottest over the past 500 years, according to some sources.

The operation comes as France, Spain and Portugal suffer intense drought -- the worst in six decades -- that is withering crops and fanning forest fires which have, to date, killed 23 firefighters and devastated tens of thousands of hectares (acres) of forest and farmland.

In southern France's Var region, firefighters said one blaze was made more dangerous by the presence of unexploded munitions that had been embedded in the rugged terrain since 1947, when a military fort exploded.

The drought is even affecting oysters, which live in bays along the Atlantic coast but which, in order to reproduce, need fresh water from rivers emptying into the bays to reduce salinity and moderate temperatures.

The use of water for agriculture, swimming pools and even washing cars has been banned in many areas in the three countries, but the regulations are difficult to enforce, with some householders sneaking out to water their gardens and lawns at night.

The drought has also fuelled a polemic over agriculture, with demands that farmers growing corn -- which needs heavy irrigation -- switch to crops that can manage with less water.

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