A study published in the September issue of BioScience, estimates that by 2050 , eighty-six species of fish may be extinct. That rate is 877 times higher than normal and has been accelerating in the past 20 years leading study author, Noel M. Burkhead of the U.S. Geological Survey to believe that “something’s up.”
Many of the extinct freshwater fishes lived in the Great lakes region and most likely died off because settlements and cities built on the lakes contributed to pollution, overfishing and the introduction of nonnative species that outcompeted them.
Marguerite A. Xenopoulos of Trent University in Ontario, who authored a 2005 study on freshwater fish extinctions, feels “the numbers should be a wake-up call that we urgently need to apply freshwater conservation efforts.”