Amid Mexico’s Day of the Dead, a fish declared extinct comes back to life

Amid Mexico’s Day of the Dead, a fish declared extinct comes back to life

Source: mongabay

11/8/2022

Credit: Enrique Ramírez.

Amid Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities, a community released thousands of golden skiffia fish back into the species’ native range in the Teuchitlán River in Jalisco state.
The fish, declared extinct in the wild in 1996, were part of a captive-breeding program and nearly 10 years of restoration work to restore their habitat and remove some of the threats that would prevent successful reintroduction.

Freshwater fish are the most threatened group of vertebrates on Earth, with scientists estimating that one out of three is threatened with extinction.
This golden skiffia reintroduction is part of the Fish Ark Mexico project, which works to conserve highly threatened species of freshwater fish in Central Mexico, including 39 species of splitfins, from the family Goodeidae.