Freshwater fish populations have declined by three-quarters in half a century, says report published on Tuesday 23 February by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and a coalition of sixteen NGOs defending the environment. The fall is even more dizzying for species exceeding 30 kg, such as certain catfish: – 94% compared to the 1970s.
One third of the estimated 18,000 species of freshwater fish are believed to be threatened. Eighty have already been declared extinct, fifteen of which in 2020 alone, including the spatula fish of the Chinese Yangtze.
However, this goes almost unnoticed. Because if public opinion is today sensitive to the deforestation of the Amazon, to plastic in the oceans and to the fate of rhinos, “The world does not know that freshwater fish are in danger – and we too”
, warns Jon Hutton, director of conservation at WWF.
The stake is enormous
For WWF, mankind cannot afford to lose these forgotten fish and their habitat
, namely rivers, lakes and marshes. On their health depend freshwater fishing and aquaculture – 60 million jobs – and downstream the food of hundreds of millions of people, from the Mekong and Ganges basin to the great lakes of Africa. In Tanzania, 85% of the fish is caught in freshwater.
What is more, the prosperity of fish is a reliable and inexpensive indicator of the quality of surface water, which 2 billion humans consume. The good condition – and good management – of rivers also results in the capacity to irrigate more than 190 million hectares around the globe.
However, according to the FAO, 90% of the fish caught comes from rivers in a state of stress due to polluting discharges, excessive pumping or poor planning. Cambodia’s ten-year moratorium on the construction of two new structures is welcomed, but it is just one of the evils affecting the Mekong, which waters six countries in Southeast Asia.
2021, decisive year
The timing of the alert is not coincidental. It is about putting pressure on the rulers before crucial meetings: the Cop 15 of biodiversity, to be held in Kunming (China) in October, preceded by the World Conservation Congress in Marseille in September. The good news is we know what to do
, emphasizes John Hutton.
The NGOs are calling for six commitments … followed by actions: restoring natural flows (this is the case for only a third of rivers over 1,000 km), restoring the quality of water (only 40% are healthy in Europe) , repair critical habitats, by stopping the exploitation of sand and the proliferation of invasive species and of course, like at sea, removing overfishing. This would be enough to reverse the trend.
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