Nearly a quarter of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of extinction due to global heating, overfishing and pollution, according to an expert assessment.

From the large-toothed Lake Turkana robber in Kenya to the Mekong giant catfish in south-east Asia, many of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of disappearing, the first International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list assessment of the category has found.

Nearly a fifth of all threatened freshwater species are affected by climate change, from impacts such as falling water levels, shifting seasons and seawater moving up rivers. Of the assessed species, 3,086 out of 14,898 were at risk of vanishing.

The latest assessment also found that mahogany, Atlantic salmon and green turtles were increasingly threatened, according to scientific assessments, but there was good news about the saiga antelope, which has moved up from the critically endangered category to near threatened after the population increased by 1,100% in just seven years, mainly in Kazakhstan.

  • Pratai@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yeah…. It’s pretty much game over at this point. Those they have the power to do anything about this will line their pockets and watch as it happens, and those that want so badly to fix it, are powerless to do anything about.

    The greedy and corrupt are soon going to get a big lesson on “when you find out you can’t take it with you.”