The biodiversity crisis, often driven by large scale stressors such as climate change, has prompted scientists to examine population and ecosystem changes in national and global scales. The development of large-scale datasets such as Living Planet Index, and BioTime has played an important role in informing conservation management and policymaking. In Australia, the Threatened Species Index (TSX) is a dataset that examines population change of threatened and near threatened species over time. However, the TSX has yet to include freshwater fishes, one of Australia’s most threatened taxonomic groups. In addition, the TSX only involves population trends of already known concerned native species by the Red List from International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) or Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act). This gap undermines the potential for using freshwater fishes as an indicator group for freshwater ecosystems and impedes our understanding on Australia’s efforts in conserving its freshwater ecosystems. Addressing this gap is crucial to inform the conservation of freshwater fishes and freshwater ecosystems in Australia.
To address this gap, this project aims to compile the first national database of population time series data (>2 years) for all freshwater fishes that occurs in Australia (both native and exotic). The database will be comparable to the Threatened Species Index (TSX) in terms of data structure (data fields and definitions). In addition, we aim to include data on whether conservation intervention took place during the time of data collection. Each time series will also include a freshwater ecosystem-type designation following the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology. This will be a critical asset in assessing population changes and conservation efforts of native freshwater fishes in different types of freshwater ecosystems in Australia. Such information is crucial in informing policy and conservation management efforts.