Poor dam management, climate change and El Niño are all thought to contribute to the river’s problems
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThe discovery of such a large fish has cheered conservationists. The Mekong river, which starts in the Tibetan plateau and snakes through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, feeding some 66m people along the way, is home to more species of huge freshwater fish than any other in the world. But they are suffering. In the past 50 years the population of giant fish has dropped by 94%.
Changing weather patterns do not help. The wet season is shorter than it used to be and tends to start later, says Courtney Weatherby of the Stimson Centre, a think-tank. Between 2019 and 2021, the water level in the Mekong was the lowest since records began 60 years ago. Poor dam management, climate change and El Niño, a weather pattern that affects rainfall in the region, are all thought to contribute to the problem.
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