Workshop on Himalayan fish kicks-off
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, March 23 2024:
A six-day International Workshop on Red Listing and Conservation Assessment of Himalayan Fishes got underway at Club Nirvana, Guwahati, Assam on Saturday with participation by more than 60 freshwater fish experts from Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Bhutan and Germany.
The workshop is being organised by Manipur University, Department of Zoology in collaboration with ICAR-Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research (DCFR), Bhimtal, Uttarakhand and Indo-German Bilateral Co-operation Project On 'Protection and Sustainable Management of Aquatic Resources in the North-Eastern Himalayan Region of India (NER-AQ)'.
The project is being jointly implemented by GIZ India and Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India (MoEFCC), with technical support from IUCN Freshwater Fish Specialist Group (IUCN-FFSG).
Manipur University is partnering with the NERAQ project in assessing the regional conservation status of fishes of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland and with ICAR-DCFR for the global conservation status, both based on the IUCN Red List categories and criteria.
A release informed that the current assessment will cover 217 freshwater species at the regional scale and 571 fishes at the global scale, including a diverse array of species from India's smallest fish, Danionella priapus to the giant 'goonch'/giant devil catfish (Bagarius bagarius).
The assessment covers species distributed in a range of habitats from lakes, beels, reservoirs, floodplain-wetlands and other small micro-habitats and from the waters of lowest to highest altitudes of the Himalayan mountain ranges.
The release continued that the workshop is culmination of the assessments carried out by the experts/assessors for the past one and half years to categorise the fish species following the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria at both regional and global scales.
The inaugural programme of the workshop kick-started with a welcome speech by programme coordinator assistant professor Dr Rameshori Yumnam followed by speeches from chief guest ICAR-DCFR director Dr Pramod Kumar Pandey and other dais members including Senckenberg Museum, Dresden, Germany freshwater fish expert Dr Ralf Britz; IUCN Freshwater Fish Specialist Group South Asia Chair Dr Rajeev Raghavan; MU CDC director professor N Mohilal Meitei; Department of Zoology head professor Th Binoy Singh and NERAQ, GIZ-India project manager Patricia Dorn.
The release further mentioned that the assessors consisting of scientists, academics, researchers and post-grad students from various universities and organisations are contributing their expertise to the Red List assessments of freshwater fishes.
The Eastern and Western Himalayan areas of India have extremely diverse freshwater ecosystems, with economic and livelihood significance.
However, conservation of this exceptional fish diversity is challenging in the wake of increasing anthropogenic pressures, as well as climate change induced stress.
The primary cause of the disregard for the great diversity of fishes in the region is the dearth of publicly available data and scientific documentation regarding their status and distribution.
There is a need of re-assessing the status of the species for which assessments are in place since 2010, and develop new assessments for the recently described species, to inform future conservation action, it emphasised.
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