Subterranean Fishes of the World

6542

2024

354 pages

1. While this document is global in scope it is informed by local and regional realities. Not everything that is in this document will be transferable to every region. However, those aspects that are relevant to a region can be addressed accordingly, and these results can then feedback again into a global strategy, and be readapted in other regions to benefit from the shared experience. Translation from local to global and back to local is crucial to ensure that regional experiences feed into a global framework and that this framework accurately reflects shared patterns and realities so that it can inform international conventions and organisations, especially in view of global environmental change. 2. As a whole there is an enormous deficit in information for most amphibian species, which hampers decision-making and evidence-based, conservation action. Yet, it is urgent that conservation action takes place with the data that are available. More targeted research, undertaken concomitantly with conservation action, is required. Increased collaborations both within and outside the amphibian conservation community are urgently needed to begin to bridge some of the information gaps. Integrating different approaches can help augment information and leverage additional support to amphibian conservation. 3. Relative to the scope of amphibian declines and extinctions, adequate financial and human resources and necessary policy measures have largely lagged behind this decades-long crisis. Should this pattern persist, we can expect to continue losing amphibian populations and species in increasingly large numbers. It is therefore critical that amphibian conservation becomes both an integral and a conspicuous part of the biodiversity conservation agenda of international and national conservation organisations of all sizes, of national and subnational levels of government, of the various institutions that focus on biodiversity education and research, of funding entities, and of organised communities and media.

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