Thousands of fish species are facing a “catastrophic” decline, endangering the health, food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. New research shows that a third of all freshwater fish today extinction of the face.
According to a report released Tuesday by 16 global conservation groups, 18,075 species of freshwater fish inhabit our oceans, accounting for more than half of the world’s total fish species and a quarter of all vertebrates in the world. Earth. That biodiversity it is critical to maintaining not only the health of the planet, but the economic prosperity of communities around the world.
Some 200 million people across Asia, Africa and South America rely on freshwater fishermen for their main source of protein, researchers reported in the report “The Forgotten Fish of the World.” About a third of these people also trust them for their jobs and livelihoods.
Despite their importance, freshwater fish are “undervalued and overlooked,” the researchers said, and now freshwater biodiversity is declining twice as much as that of the oceans and forests.
Eighty freshwater species have already been declared extinct, 16 of them by 2020 alone.
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“Nowhere is the world’s nature crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes and wetlands, and the clearest indicator of the damage we are doing is the rapid decline of freshwater fish populations. They are the aquatic version of the canary in the coal mine, and we have to heed the warning, ”said Stuart Orr of the World Wildlife Fund. “Despite their importance to local communities and indigenous peoples around the world, freshwater fish are invariably forgotten and not taken into account in development decisions about hydroelectric dams or water use. or construction in floodplains “.
Migratory species have fallen by more than three-quarters in the last 50 years, while populations of larger species, known as “megafish,” have declined 94 percent “catastrophically”.
Freshwater ecosystems face a devastating combination of threats, such as habitat destruction, hydroelectric dams, excessive extraction of water for irrigation, various types of pollution, overfishing, the introduction of invasive species and ongoing climate change.
Organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, Global Wildlife Conservation and The Nature Conservancy have called on governments to implement an “emergency recovery plan” to save freshwater biodiversity. They recommend protecting and restoring rivers, water quality and crucial habitats, undoing the damage caused by overfishing.
“Freshwater fish are important to the health of people and the freshwater ecosystems on which all people and all terrestrial life depend,” Orr said. “It’s time we remembered.”