PUBLISHED: 4 Mar 2024, 9:27
One-fifth of the fish species in Southeast Asia’s major arteries are threatened by unsustainable growth, according to a report released on Monday by restoration organizations.
The Mekong is a farming and fishing backbone for tens of millions of people in China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, stretching roughly 5, 000 kilometers from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea.
According to the report compiled by the World Wildlife Fund and 25 world sea and wildlife conservation organizations, threats to its bass include biodiversity loss, wetlands change for agriculture and fishing, untenable sand mining, the introduction of invasive species, worsening climate change, and hydropower dams severing the flow of the river and its tributaries.
Hydropower growth is currently the biggest threat, according to fish scientist Zeb Hogan, who is one of the organizations behind the report’s release.
According to him, rivers alter the flow of the third-most diverse river in the world, alter the quality of the water, and prevent fish from migrating.
In the Mekong River Delta, a growing number of Chinese-built hydroelectric dams have largely blocked the sand that provides important nutrients to tens of thousands of fields, according to a report from Reuters in 2022.
According to the conservationists ‘ report,” The Mekong’s Forgotten Fishes,” some 19 % of the 1, 148 or more fish species in the Mekong are on the verge of extinction, with some saying that the figure may be higher because no information is available about 38 % of the species ‘ conservation status.
18 types, including two of the world’s largest fish, the largest fish, and the big water shark, are among those facing death that the International Union for Conservation of Nature has labeled as” thoroughly endangered.”
On the Mekong River, Hogan claimed,” Some of the largest and finest seafood… anywhere on earth exist.”
According to the report, the Mekong, which accounts for over 15 % of the world’s inland catch and generates over$ 11 billion annually, could affect food security for at least 40 million people in the Lower Mekong basin whose livelihood depends on the river.
Hogan claimed that coordinated efforts to stop the fish population’s negative effects were” hardly also late” for the river.
There is still hope, he said, “if we take action, cumulatively take action, to create the river responsibly.”