An Amazon fisher for 38 years, Josué de Castro said he was very surprised when he learned that tambaqui, a fish that accounts for 20% of his income, is now a threatened species in Brazil, and he might not be allowed to fish it anymore. “It will ultimately have a big impact on the lives of the fishers and riverside communities who depend on fishing,” Castro, who lives in the São Raimundo do Jarauá community in northern Amazonas state, told Mongabay by phone. “In our area, I don’t think it’s actually facing extinction yet; there are still plenty of them around.” One of the most consumed fish in the Brazilian Amazon, the tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) was included in the official national list of threatened fish and aquatic invertebrate fauna species published by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) in April. Starting at the end of October, its fishing could be prohibited in the entire country if a recovery plan isn’t implemented by then, said Braulio Dias, MMA’s director of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. “Inclusion on the list does not mean a fishing ban, provided that a population recovery plan — proposed by experts under MMA coordination — is approved,” Dias told Mongabay in a text message, adding that Ordinance Nº 1,666, published on the same day of the April 27 list, set a 180-day deadline for this to happen, which would be Oct. 25. Tambaqui, Manaus Fish Market, Brazil. Image by Thorke Østergaard via Wikimedia Commons…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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