For far too long, the decline in the biodiversity of our rivers and lakes has been out of sight and out of mind. As a freshwater ecologist I have long felt frustrated as conservation and research is dominated by land and sea species, even though our rivers, lakes, ponds and other wetlands host a hugely disproportionate amount of the world’s biodiversity in their relatively small area.

The first comprehensive assessment of the risk of extinction of freshwater species, now published in the journal Nature, is set to change this. The scientists involved in the new study used the recently completed “red list” for freshwater fishes, and the one for dragonflies and damselflies.

Red lists are official inventories of conservation status compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They combined this with data from the previously published red list for freshwater crabs, crayfishes and shrimps. In total, they assessed more than 23,000 species.

The authors conclude that close to a quarter (24%) of freshwater species are threatened with extinction. That is, they have been officially assessed as vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered or extinct in the wild.

These include the critically endangered European eel, and the endangered white-clawed crayfish, both of which were abundant in the streams of my childhood.

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