FIFA NATURE RESERVE, Jordan — Jordan is racing against time to save a tiny rare fish from
extinction as falling water levels partly triggered by global warming threaten
to dry up its last habitat.
اضافة اعلان
The Dead Sea toothcarp — scientific name Aphanius dispar
richardsoni — has been on the red list of the International Union for
Conversation of Nature since 2014.
The IUCN warns that the "exploitation of spring waters
and climate change" are major threats facing the four-centimeter-long,
silver-colored fish.
"This fish is threatened with extinction at the global
level. It is endemic here and does not exist elsewhere," said Ibrahim
Mahasneh, the manager of the fish's last home, the Fifa Nature Reserve.
Lying some 140 kilometers southwest of Amman in the Jordan
Rift Valley and 60 kilometers south of the Dead Sea, the area is the lowest wet
reserve on Earth.
Established in 2011, the reserve consists of some 20 square
kilometers. It is located some 426 meters below sea level and is managed by an
independent body, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN).
This area of wetlands is criss-crossed by streams and is
home to a variety of plant and wildlife species including birds.
"We have a plan to save and breed this fish... to
create a natural habitat for it to breed and at the same time to mitigate the
existing threat," added Mahasneh.
"The reserve is the last home for this endangered
species of fish," said environmental researcher Abdallah Oshoush who works
in the reserve.
'Precious treasures'
The male fish also has a streak of blue along its sides,
while the female has incomplete black stripes.
It is not known how many still remain, but "monitoring
programs have warned of a clear decline in the presence of this fish in recent
years," Oshoush said.
Among the environmental threats causing numbers to drop is
the "lowering water level due to low rainfall and the change in its
environment, as well as the presence of other fish that feed on it and its
eggs."
Researchers are now preparing to open an artificial pond
just for the toothcarp so they can grow safely and their eggs are not devoured
by predators. Each season, a female produces around 1,000 eggs.
The aim is then to release the young fish back into the
natural environment.
"In Jordan live two unique species of fish that do not
exist anywhere else in the world. These are our precious treasures and they
must be preserved for our ecosystem," said RSCN spokesperson Salem Nafaa.
Two decades ago the RSCN succeeded in saving the endangered
Aphanuis Sirhani fish in its only habitat in the Azraq reserve, about 110
kilometres (65 miles) east of Amman.
It got its scientific name from the Wadi Sirhan, which
extends from the Arabian Peninsula to Azraq, but is commonly known in English
as the Azraq killifish.
Only about six centimeters long, it is also silver but
the female is spotted while the male has black stripes.
Predators, birds
"In the year 2000, there were no more than 500 Azraq
killifish in the oasis, which means it was on the verge of extinction,"
said Nashat Hmaidan, the director of the RSCN Biodiversity Monitoring Center.
"It was declining sharply, and it reached just 0.02
percent of the number of fish in the oasis," he said, blaming other
predatory fish and migratory birds as well as a fall in water levels.
The RSCN studied the fish's life cycle and determined it
needed shallow water to lay eggs, and should be isolated from other species for
the best chance of survival.
"We collected 20 fish over two years and put them in a
concrete pond designated for breeding."
After the first fish were released back into the waters the
team saw its presence had increased from 0.02 percent to nearly 50 percent. It
"was a great success," he added.
Twenty years on, the Azraq killifish accounts for almost 70
percent of the fish in the waters. But he cautioned the goal now is that the
numbers should "never drop below 50 percent".
Hazem Hrisha, the director of the Azraq Wetland reserve,
highlighted its important biodiversity, with more than 133 plant species and
more than 163 species of invertebrates.
The reserve "is located on the most important bird
migration paths," he said, adding two thirds of the bird species found in
the kingdom had been recorded in Azraq.
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