Overview
- The UN/CMS global assessment, presented Tuesday at the CMS COP15 in Campo Grande, reports migratory freshwater fish populations have fallen about 81% since 1970.
- The report expands the species flagged for coordinated international protection to roughly 349 by identifying about 325 new candidates.
- Hotspots include the Mekong, Amazon, La‑Plata/Paraná, Danube, Nile, Ganges and Brahmaputra, with 205 of the new candidate species in Asia and 20 proposed for the Amazon that account for 93% of its fish catch worth about $436 million a year.
- Researchers identify dams, river fragmentation, pollution, overfishing and climate change as the main causes, which break migration routes, degrade habitat and reduce survival.
- Many key rivers flow through non‑party states, which could slow any CMS action even if new plans are agreed at COP15.