Status: Ongoing
Donor: IUCN-Toyota Red List Partnership
Photo: IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit
Figure 1: Progress on the global assessment of freshwater fishes for The IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM.
The IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit, with support from the IUCN-Toyota Red List Partnership, aims to make significant progress towards completing a globally comprehensive assessment of freshwater fishes by 2021. This is vitally important given that as much as 75% of the world’s inland wetlands may have been lost during the 20th century, and freshwater populations have declined by 83% on average between 1970 and 2014, equivalent to 4% per year, according to the latest Living Planet Report¹.
As of version 2020-2 of the IUCN Red List, 10,035 freshwater fish species have been assessed out of a total of approximately 18,000, meaning we are 56% of the way towards our goal.
Photo: IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit
Figure 2: Percentage of freshwater fishes assessed for The IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM version 2020-2 in each Red List Category.
Our current focus regions supported by the IUCN-Toyota Red List Partnership are: South America, Central Asia, Russia, India, Pakistan, Sunda Basin, Philippines, New Guinea and Timor-Leste.
The IUCN-Toyota Red List Partnership started in 2016 with the aim of significantly increasing knowledge on the extinction risk of more than 28,000 species, including this globally comprehensive assessment of freshwater fish. This partnership is driven by the Toyota Environmental Challenge2050², which aims to reduce the negative impacts associated with automobiles to zero and beyond, whilst simultaneously making positive impacts on society.
¹ https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2018
² https://www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/environment/challenge2050
