In a world where habitats are degrading and the climate is warming and becoming unpredictable, biodiversity conservation efforts and funding remain grossly inadequate. As part of a multifaceted approach to halting extinctions, shifting from preserving small, remnant populations to a practice of genetically connecting populations that recreate larger and more diverse populations is expected to be beneficial. This harnesses key...

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Green Status of Species (GSS), introduced in 2021, is a global standard of measurement used to assess the level to which a species has recovered (i.e., is viable and providing its ecological function across its entire range). It is also used to evaluate how a species has responded to past conservation actions and the expected conservation gains and recovery potential it...

As one of the world’s most regulated river basins, the semi-arid Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) in south-eastern Australia is considered at high ecological risk, with substantial declines in native fish populations already identified and climate change threats looming. This places great importance on the collection and use of data to document population trends over large spatial extents, inform management decisions, and provide ba...

Rivers suffer from multiple stressors acting simultaneously on their biota, but the consequences are poorly quantified at the global scale. We evaluated the biological condition of rivers globally, including the largest proportion of countries from the Global South published to date. We gathered macroinvertebrate‐ and fish‐based assessments from 72,275 and 37,676 sites, respectively, from 64 study regions across six continents...

Restoring levels of genetic diversity in small and declining populations is increasingly being considered in biodiversity conservation. Evidence-based genetic management requires assessment of risks and benefits of crossing populations. Because risks are challenging to assess experimentally, e.g. through multi-generational crosses, decision-support approaches utilize proxy risk factors such as time since separation of lineages...

Aim After environmental disasters, species with large population losses may need urgent protection to prevent extinction and support recovery. Following the 2019–2020 Australian megafires, we estimated population losses and recovery in fire‐affected fauna, to inform conservation status assessments and management. Location Temperate and subtropical Australia. Time period 2019–2030 and beyond. Major taxa Australian terrestrial a...

Stocky galaxias Galaxias tantangara is a newly described freshwater fish restricted to a single population, occupying a 3 km reach of a small headwater stream in the upper Murrumbidgee River catchment of south‐eastern Australia. This species is listed as critically endangered under IUCN Red List criteria, and knowledge of the species’ ecology is critical for future conservation efforts to establish additional populations by tr...

Adaptive differences across species’ ranges can have important implications for population persistence and conservation management decisions. Despite advances in genomic technologies, detecting adaptive variation in natural populations remains challenging. Key challenges in gene–environment association studies involve distinguishing the effects of drift from those of selection and identifying subtle signatures of polygenic ada...

To investigate possible predation on a remnant population of the endangered Macquaria australasica in Cotter Reservoir, ACT, Australia, stomach content analysis was conducted on 63 rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss and 24 brown trout Salmo trutta . Both predators were found to be piscivorous, with the frequency of piscivory generally increasing with body size. Goldfish Carassius auratus were the only fish species identified in...