Home Topics Wildlife Gallery: The endangered sawfish

Gallery: The endangered sawfish

By AG Staff • 22 August 2017

Image credit: Sam Lewis

Reading Time: < 1 • Print this page

Sharks and Rays Australia has been conducting research surveys across river systems adjacent to Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria aiming to find and count sawfish.

In Australia, there are four species of sawfish. Three of those are listed as vulnerable and migratory on Australia’s EPBC Act, while the fourth species is listed as migratory. Freshwater (or largetooth) sawfish (Pristis pristis) are critically endangered globally and in Australia they are protected under state legislation in Qld, NT and WA, additional to their EPBC Act listing.

Dr Barbara Wueringer, the principal scientist of Sharks And Rays Australia, has been working with sawfish since 2006. As her previous work focused on how sawfish use their saw to both sense and manipulate prey, she finds the practice of amputating a sawfishes saw particularly troubling. The practice is also illegal.

Before species go extinct, their populations often shrink and become isolated. Healthy populations tend to have a large gene pool with many genetic variants circulating. But the path to extinction erodes genetic diversity, because a species’ gene pool shrinks as the population declines. Losing genetic diversity limits the ability of populations to adapt to threats such as disease and climate change.