Chennai: A new climate change study by the government’s Wildlife Institute of India has found that snow trout, the iconic cold water fish species found in Himalayan rivers, would lose their habitat by 16 per cent in the next 30 years and by over 26 per cent by 2070.
Titled “Is There Always Space at The Top”, the study was published in the “Ecological Indicators”, a journal of high international repute based at the Netherlands.
Funded by the Department of Science & Technology (DST), the study is a part of the government’s National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE), which was launched to research the impact of climate change on the Himalayan ecosystem.
It indicates that most of the lower altitude streams across the Himalayas would be rendered unsuitable for the existence of snow trout with the rise in temperatures.
An ensemble of 72 statistical models across the Himalayas, the study — authored by Wildlife Institute of India (WII) scientists Aashna Sharma, Vineet Kumar Dubey, Jeyaraj Antony Johnson, Yogesh Kumar Rawal and Kuppusamy Sivakumar reveals the vulnerable snow trout would be squeezed into the high-altitude rivers in the Himalayas.
According to the study, mountain systems across the globe are conspicuously sensitive to on-going climate alterations and the condition is much more detrimental in the Himalaya, where the rate of warming, and thus the glacier meltdown, is much higher than elsewhere.
The Himalayan coldwater species are concerningly most vulnerable to these changes because of their limited thermal range, it claims.
The study iterates that if the countries across the globe continue their greenhouse emissions as usual (mentioning it as the ‘business-as-usual scenario’), the species (snow trout) would lose a net habitat of 16.29 per cent till the year 2050 which would further increase to 26.56 per cent in the year 2070.
As it stands, the snow trout faces serious threats due to river valley modifications, destructive fishing practices and exotic salmonid introductions, it says and adds: Due to ongoing threats, its population size has been reduced drastically in Himalayan waters, hence listed as vulnerable in the IUCN Red List.
According to the study, the fish species has great commercial and recreational value and its sole presence in the high-altitude cold waters makes it a flagship species to conserve the Himalayan rivers.