Freshwater Animals News

Eighty-eight-year-old Le Huy Hoanh stands up from his bench and carefully poured tea in rural Vietnam, and mimes for us how he used to kill gods. With his long spear…

In 2003, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences captured, tagged and released a female Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) that had accidentally been caught in the Yangtze River. In…

This is our last episode of 2019, so we took a look back at the bioacoustic recordings we featured here on the Mongabay Newscast over the past year and today…

India’s Ganga is a noisy river. There’s the churning of sediment, the hums, grunts and growls of fishes and turtles. There are the cacophonous stretches of cities and industries breathing…

When collecting a DNA sample from a species in the wild just isn’t possible — it’s elusive, it may disturb the animal, or a host of other reasons — field…

On today’s episode, we speak with Gabriel Melo-Santos, whose study of Araguaian river dolphins in Brazil has revealed that the species is chattier than we’d previously known — and could…

A first-of-its-kind analysis of Earth’s longest rivers found that they have been severely degraded by human activities and suggests ways for countries to maintain and restore rivers around the world.…

“Why on earth would anyone give up working on tigers to focus on freshwater fish?” is the question I am asked most frequently since becoming the Executive Director of Shoal,…

There’s another world beneath the soil of Central Texas, one that is dark, wet, and mysterious. It’s an isolated kingdom ruled by a unique group of underground salamanders. Now, new…

The Sinop Dam has become a critical test case — not only on the question of clearing reservoirs before filling, but also on the real effect of Brazil’s environmental legislation…

The survey looked easy on paper. All they had to do was to go the Babai Valley in western Nepal and fly a drone (or unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV) along…

The millions of waterbirds that migrate each spring from South America to as far as the Arctic can’t do it in one trip. They stop to rest and refuel several…

Selective logging has long been considered the lesser evil compared to clear-cutting when it comes to habitat preservation. But a new study adds to a growing chorus of concern that…

JAKARTA — The sale of some of the most threatened tortoise and turtle species from around the world continues to flourish at stores and exhibitions across Jakarta, highlighting longstanding concerns…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Tilapia is a mainstay of Balinese cuisine, but hundreds of thousands of the freshwater fish choke to death regularly in the resort island’s largest lake, for reasons…

Madagascar is known as an ark for biodiversity that's found nowhere else on the planet. Unfortunately, it's also known for the bevy of threats that those distinctive species that live…

BENI DEPARTMENT, Bolivia — The sound of hundreds of excited children drowns out the gentle hum of nature. Those closest to the shoreline hold in their hands, some for the…

An Australian mining company aims to begin searching for minerals, as well as oil and gas, next to part of the Mekong River in Cambodia where the endangered Irrawaddy river…

Trump’s 2018 budget, if adopted, threatens to kill already precarious Northwest salmon fisheries — crippling the local economies of US and Canadian communities and tribal nations.

During the wet season, manatees swim Amazon basin floodplains; in dry times they migrate to lakes. Hundreds of planned dams could disrupt that cycle.

SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Activists in eastern Borneo suspect that an Irrawaddy dolphin found dead on a local beach last month had probably been snagged in a fishing net. This is…

The sweet-tasting tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) is a popular staple on grills and dinner tables in Manaus, Brazil. But as the human population of the Amazonian city has soared, the effects…

Beneath their prehistoric-looking shells, turtles conceal an extraordinary ability to hold their breath underwater, going without oxygen for hours, even months, at a time. This cellular-level capacity to survive underwater…

Animal pet markets, filled with assorted species, can sometimes yield species previously unknown to science. In 2012, for example, researchers found a new species of giant flying squirrel in a…

ish kills, mercury contamination, the extinction of known aquatic species (along with others still not known to science), plus the physical and economic ruin of indigenous and traditional river communities.…

magine a fish isolated in an Amazonian lake — part of the vast freshwater ecosystem of the Amazon basin, an ever-changing network of rivers, lakes and floodplains that extends to…

Palm oil plantations often wreak havoc on biodiversity. But researchers may now have hit upon a win-win solution that allows freshwater fish to thrive in streams within palm oil plantations. Retaining…

palm oil company remains at the heart of conflict in northern Guatemala, months after a mass fish die-off. A day after company operations were suspended pending further investigation into the…

A male Cherax pulcher. Photo by: Christian Lukhaup. An independent researcher has described a spectacular red, white, and blue crayfish just in time for the fourth of July. The new…

Releasing the giant mamma freshwater stingray. Photo courtesy of Ocean Mysteries and Jeff Corwin. Conservationists and scientists have managed to catch-and-release what could be the world's biggest freshwater fish ever…