“If these dam projects go ahead, the stretch of the Mekong that was once core habitat and spawning grounds for several giant fish species is going to be chopped into ever-smaller pieces,” says National Geographic Explorer Zeb Hogan
, a freshwater ecologist at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany. It finds that the dams there will disproportionately affect the largest river animals.
Adds Hogan, a study co-author, “it’s a pattern we’re seeing in other tropical rivers as well, like the Amazon and the Congo, but the Mekong is the poster child for this problem, with accelerating hydropower development driving extinction risk of some of the world’s most iconic animals.”Freshwater megafauna, loosely defined as species that weigh over 66 pounds on average, are among the most endangered animals on Earth.
Conservationists hoped new dams would follow the less-destructive model of two megadams that are already up and running on the Mekong’s main stem. Conservationists had hoped “the investment at Xayaburi would be the gold standard, and all future dams would either meet, or exceed, the investment in facilities,” says
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