The Amazon is the largest, most biologically diverse basin in the world. Its rainforest, the planet’s greatest continuous tropical forest, plays a critical role in global climate regulation. The Amazon Basin also represents the biggest river and wetland system in the world, and is home to more than 47 million people, including some 1.5 million Indigenous peoples whose lives, culture, and livelihoods are intimately related to its waters. Those waters provide habitat for more than 2,500 scientifically described fish species. Some of these have the distinction of completing the longest freshwater fish migrations on Earth. At the 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals – or CMS COP-14 – taking place in Uzbekistan this month, the government of Brazil has proposed to conserve two catfish species with extraordinary migrations, the dorado and piramutaba (manitoa). Dorado and manitoa catfish. Graphic courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society. The migratory movements of the dorado catfish (Brachyplatystoma rouseauxii) are widely recognized in the Amazon Basin. Its migratory journey spans an astonishing distance of more than 11,000 kilometers round trip, from spawning areas in the Andes to nursery areas at the mouth of the Amazon River in the Atlantic Ocean. The dorado’s migratory route, although not yet fully unraveled, is believed to take it through at least six countries, including Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela. A combination of factors that include their abundance, size, and schooling behavior make migratory fish species the most important fish captured in the commercial…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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