Bangladesh recovered 29 near extinct fish species in 14 years: officials

BSS :
Bangladesh has recovered the deltaic region’s 29 near extinct fish species in the past 14 years and preserved them in the newly established Live Gene Bank to reproduce them along with other critically endangered fresh water fish varieties, officials said here today.
“Twenty nine nearly extinct fish species have been recovered in the past 14 years . . . some of them were previously believed to be extinct species,” Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) director general Dr Mohammad Julfiqur Ali told BSS.
He said a BFRI campaign was underway to preserve “critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable and near threatened” fresh water fish species in its Live Gene Bank, established in 2020 with an aim for their reproduction in commercial hatcheries. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in its latest 2015 report said they found 64 or 25.3 percent of Bangladesh’s total fish species “threatened”.
According to the IUCN report out of the 64, nine species were “critical endangered”, 30 were “endangered” and five were “vulnerable”. Its previous 2000 assessment said 54 fish species were threatened and of them 12 were “critically endangered”, 28 “endangered” and 14 “vulnerable”.
The IUCN assesses the total fish species in Bangladesh to be as high as 266 of which 140 are small fishes and the rest 126 are big in sizes.
According to experts, cultivation fisheries which are cultured commercially in hatcheries or close ponds increased rapidly but natural fish production and fish species on open waters declined comparatively in the past several decades.
“Until 1970s there was an abundance of fish in the natural waters of the country to well satisfy the demand. However, capture fish production (in open waters) declined more than 50 percent, with a negative trend of 1.24 percent per year,” IUCN’s 2015 report said. As a result, it said, several fish species were on the verge of extinction while many others were facing extinction in near future.
The BFRI chief Ali said certain fish varieties extinct over the years due to the drying up of their natural habitat amid changing weather patterns and other environmental perturbations.
But the state-run research organisation’s Principal Scientific Officer (PSO) Dr Anuradha Bhadra said out of IUCN-listed 64 “threatened” species “we have been able to protect the germplasm of 40 species”.
She said the BFRI strengthened its research to protect the local fish breed and to make availability of the fish species for the people through transferring its breeding technology to the farmers end.