Raising awareness of Australia’s most threatened freshwater fish: the compilation of a Red Hot Redlist — ASN Events

Raising awareness of Australia’s most threatened freshwater fish: the compilation of a Red Hot Redlist (#143)

Mark Lintermans 1 2 , Hayley Geyle 3 4
  1. Threatened Fishes Committee, Australian Society for Fish Biology, Canberra
  2. University of Canberra, CANBERRA, ACT, Australia
  3. Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT, Australia
  4. Threatened Species Recovery Hub, , National Environmental Science Program, Darwin

The number of Australian freshwater fish recognised as threatened has grown rapidly over the last decade. The ASFB threatened Fishes Committee (ASFB TFC) has coordinated a non-statutory national listing process since 1987. The current statutory listing process and legislation (the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act)) commenced in 2000.  The current ASFB TFC list contains 63 threatened freshwater fish, with 36 taxa recognised as threatened since 2000. By contrast, the EPBC list only contains 38 freshwater fish, 11 listed since 2000, including only 4 of the species listed by ASFB since 2000.  Federal funding and conservation activities and actions under the recently introduced National Threatened Species Strategy (TSS) are effectively restricted to EPBC-listed taxa, with no freshwater fish listed as priority species under the TSS (only mammals, birds and plants). To raise awareness about the most imperiled fauna, the Threatened Species Hub in conjunction with the ASFB TFC held a workshop to identify the likelihood of extinction of 22 freshwater fish species considered at risk of extinction in the next 20 years. The results of the workshop are presented, along with the next steps in engaging the Commonwealth in progressing the listing of the identified species.

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