https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08375-z
"Freshwater ecosystems are highly biodiverse1 and important for livelihoods and
economic development, but are under substantial stress. To date, comprehensive
global assessments of extinction risk have not included any speciose groups
primarily living in freshwaters. Consequently, data from predominantly
terrestrial tetrapods are used to guide environmental policy and conservation
prioritization, whereas recent proposals for target setting in freshwaters use
abiotic factors. However, there is evidence that such data are insufficient to
represent the needs of freshwater species and achieve biodiversity goals. Here
we present the results of a multi-taxon global freshwater fauna assessment for
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species covering 23,496 decapod crustaceans,
fishes and odonates, finding that one-quarter are threatened with extinction.
Prevalent threats include pollution, dams and water extraction, agriculture and
invasive species, with overharvesting also driving extinctions. We also
examined the degree of surrogacy of both threatened tetrapods and freshwater
abiotic factors (water stress and nitrogen) for threatened freshwater species.
Threatened tetrapods are good surrogates when prioritizing sites to maximize
rarity-weighted richness, but poorer when prioritizing based on the most
range-restricted species. However, they are much better surrogates than abiotic
factors, which perform worse than random. Thus, although global priority
regions identified for tetrapod conservation are broadly reflective of those
for freshwater faunas, given differences in key threats and habitats, meeting
the needs of tetrapods cannot be assumed sufficient to conserve freshwater
species at local scales."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
