WASHINGTON — Almost 1 / 4 of animals dwelling in rivers, lakes and different freshwater sources are threatened with extinction, based on new analysis revealed Wednesday.
“Huge rivers like the Amazon can appear mighty, but at the same time freshwater environments are very fragile,” stated research co-author Patricia Charvet, a biologist at Brazil’s Federal College of Ceará.
Freshwater habitats – together with rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, bogs and wetlands – cowl lower than 1 % of the planet’s floor, however help 10 % of its animal species, stated Catherine Sayer, a zoologist on the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature in England.
The researchers examined round 23,500 species of dragonflies, fish, crabs and different animals that rely solely on freshwater ecosystems. They discovered that 24 % had been liable to extinction – categorised as susceptible, endangered or critically endangered – attributable to compounding threats from air pollution, dams, water extraction, agriculture, invasive species, local weather change and different disruptions.
“Most species don’t have just one threat putting them at risk of extinction, but many threats acting together,” stated Sayer, a study-co-author.
The tally, revealed within the journal Nature, is the primary that point researchers have analyzed the worldwide danger to freshwater species. Earlier research have targeted on land animals together with together with mammals, birds and reptiles.
Duke College ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was not concerned within the research, known as it “a long-awaited and hugely important paper.”
“Almost every big river in North America and Europe is massively modified” by way of damming, placing freshwater species in danger, he stated.
In South America, the huge Amazon River ecosystem additionally faces threats from deforestation, wildfires and unlawful gold mining, stated Charvet.
Unlawful fires to clear forest end in waves of ash polluting the river, and unlicensed gold miners dump mercury into the water, she stated.
Rivers and wetlands “concentrate everything that happens around them,” she stated. “If something goes really wrong, like an acid or oil spill, you can threaten an entire species. There’s nowhere else for these animals to go.”
The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Academic Media Group. The AP is solely answerable for all content material.