The most comprehensive tally of how migrating animals are faring looks at more than 1,000 land and aquatic species and aims to find ways to protect them.
Migratory species don’t travel with a passport, but they cross borders all the time. This makes the animals’ conservation a uniquely challenging, international effort. The report is the most comprehensive tally of the over 1,000 species protected under an international treaty called the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animalsor CMS.
Nearly half of CMS species are experiencing population declines. Of those, fishes are faring the worst: 97 percent, roughly 56 species, are facing extinction. That includes species such as devil rays or endangered species of fish than of any other animal group covered by an international treaty called the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animal. While insects appear to be faring well, the report covers just one species — monarch butterflies — and notes that their story is not so simple: While the species overall is listed as least concern, the ones that migrate are considered endangered.U.N. researchers reviewed data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species and found a 90 percent average decrease in the abundance of CMS-listed fishes since 1970. No other group of animals experienced an average decrease, let alone one this significant. The main culprits include bycatch , overfishing and pollution, the report notes. The report goes beyond the species of every group already under the treaty’s protection and identifies almost 400 other species as vulnerable, including more than 200 fish species that are not yet protected — most of which have decreasing populations, like the zebra shark (The international treaty called the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals covers just about a quarter of all migratory species. Of the remaining 3,339 species not covered by the treaty, 399 are considered either threatened or near threatened. Once again, fishes top that list.“When you drill down into it, very few fish species are actually protected,” says Richard Caddell, an expert in marine and environmental law and policy at Cardiff University in Wales, who was not a part of this report. Only a few, like those heralded for caviar, are better protected than the rest, mainly for their commercial value. Protecting migratory species on land across multiple countries is hard enough. But when it comes to animals in water, it’s a whole other beast. Most of the ocean is a mystery, andAnd fish have another problem — they’re not sexy, Caddell says. Fish don’t draw conservation funding and international recognition the way gorillas and elephants and other charismatic megafauna do. “People think of a fish as being something that ends up on their plates,” he says.It recommends ways to protect migratory fish species from pollution and bycatch, like attaching LED lights to nets to deter certain fish. But it also keeps fishes in the spotlight, weaving the discussion of them throughout the report. By making their decline central to this report, delegates at CMS COP14 may take more notice, Caddell says. “States not acting might not be out of malice or negligence, but out of sheer ignorance as to the true conservation status of a number of these animals, which is why a report like this is brilliant,” Caddell says. More than 100 parties have signed and ratified the CMS since 1979. The United States is not one of those countries, but it has agreed to elements of the treaty focusing on marine mammals and sharks. But even for nations that have ratified the CMS, there’s no real legal penalties if they don’t follow the treaty. Instead, Caddell says reports like this new one remind those involved to do better. “I think this report is a very, very welcome development,” Caddell says. “There’s an opportunity here to build a little bit of political momentum to try to think about fish in a different way. And to move away from that we’re just there to eat them.”
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