By Dean Muruven, WWF Global Freshwater Policy Manager
A few weeks ago, I came across a story in the New York Times about whether the platypus — currently plagued by habitat loss, drought and wildfires in Australia — can actually survive in a warming world. Trying to find out more about the plight of the platypus (which would be a fantastic title for a book!), Google inadvertently led me to the Platypus Trophy.
If this were the trophy for the country that did the most to safeguard the world’s collapsing freshwater biodiversity, it would make sense. But it’s actually a sports trophy in America, which makes no sense. Although it turns out it’s a pretty big deal if you study at America’s Oregon State University or its archrival, the University of Oregon.
The platypus is an extraordinarily bizarre looking animal, which is found in rivers and streams on Australia’s East coast — that’s about 13,000 kms away from Oregon yet it has somehow managed to insert itself into Oregon College Football folklore. The trophy depicts a platypus — an iconic freshwater mammal that has features of both a duck (Oregon’s mascot) and a beaver (Oregon State’s mascot). For three years, from 1959 to 1961, the trophy was awarded to the winning school but then it vanished for over 40 years before being rediscovered and resuming life as the game’s unofficial trophy in 2007.
Given that the trophy seemed to have been lost for good five decades ago (50 years that have seen the world lose 83% of its freshwater species populations) and that we are now at the point where we might soon lose the species behind the trophy forever, it got me thinking about how many sports teams or sporting moments have a connection to rivers and their iconic biodiversity?
The Fujian Sturgeons is a Chinese professional basketball team, which is currently languishing in 12th position — not dissimilar to the status of the fish they are named after. There are good reasons to want to name a team after sturgeon since they are among the oldest fish in existence, having swum with — and comfortably outlasted — the dinosaurs. But today they are the most endangered family of species on the planet. Indeed, a close relative of the sturgeon — the Chinese Paddlefish — has just been declared extinct. And there is real concern that the Yangtze sturgeon could be next. Meanwhile, 7 of the 8 sturgeon species in Europe are also threatened with extinction. There was a time when sturgeons migrated far up the Yangtze and the Danube and provided livelihoods for many fishing communities. No longer. The Fujian coaches, fans and players must hope that their team doesn’t follow the same trajectory as their mascot!
Next on our list is the Pantanal Futebol Clube, simply known as Pantanal, based in Corumbá, Brazil. For a while it seemed to be a functional football team, even finding its way onto the FIFA 2014 video game but then they vanished, except for what looks like a Sunday league team’s Facebook page (although I’m not sure as my Portuguese is very rusty!). Even though I couldn’t find out much about it, the team deserves to be included here because it is named after the world’s largest tropical wetland.
At 17 million hectares, the Pantanal covers an area slightly larger than England and sprawls across three countries — Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. While not as globally famous as the Amazon to its north, the Pantanal is one of the most biologically rich environments on the planet with more than 4,700 plant and animal species. And like the football team, the future of the Pantanal and its species is at risk! A host of threats from unsustainable infrastructure to untreated waste are destabilizing this extraordinary ecosystem and the benefits it provides people and wildlife.
We are going to stay with soccer but cross to Asia and the Mekong Cup. This club tournament for the ASEAN league ran for four years and then disappeared, perhaps they knew something about naming things after disappearing deltas! Because the mighty Mekong delta, like all of Asia’s great deltas, is vanishing before our very eyes. Home to over 400 million people and a wealth of biodiversity, Asia’s great deltas are critical to the economies, food security and sustainable development of the entire continent. But these deltas are sinking and shrinking at an alarming rate due to human activities. The sponsors and organizers behind the Mekong Cup clearly did not have an effective strategy in place to keep it going. It is critical that we do not make the same mistake with Asia’s deltas.
Time to leave the round ball behind and head to the African continent. Not to South Africa and its rugby world cup winning springboks but to Uganda and the Jinja Hippos Rugby Club, which plays in the Nile Special Stout Rugby Premier league — and iconic African freshwater species and an iconic African river. The Jinja Hippos are in 7th place at the moment, so while there’s room for improvement it’s not too bad, which is pretty similar to the current status of freshwater resources in Africa.
Absolutely critical for the continent’s development, freshwater resources are under increasing threat from over-abstraction of water, inappropriate infrastructure development, invasive non-native species, land transformation destroying healthy catchments, overfishing and more. What is needed is better management — always the demand of fans when their teams are not doing well — and with that Africa’s freshwater resources can fuel a thriving sustainable future for its people and nature.
On to something a little less mainstream. The Asian Cranes are a Womens Gaelic Football team that competes in the Asian Gaelic Games. Who knew that this ancient Irish sport was even played in Asia (or anywhere outside Ireland!)? But just like the sport has migrated thousands of kilometres, cranes and millions of other birds migrate vast distances — as much as 13,000 km — from breeding grounds as far north as the Arctic Circle to overwintering grounds as far south as Australia and New Zealand, and then return the next year.
This transcontinental annual migration along great flyways, which have been used for millennia are one of Nature’s most important and wondrous phenomena. And at the heart of them are wetlands — stepping stones along these routes that sustain migrating birds but are also essential for human wellbeing and survival, inclusive economic growth, and climate mitigation and adaptation. They protect shorelines, cities and communities from extreme storms and floods, and are important carbon sinks. So helping to protect and restore healthy wetlands will help to halt the rapid decline in migratory bird populations and increase the resilience of communities and cities.
You’ve probably started to pick up a pattern, sports teams connected to iconic freshwater species or ecosystems that have vanished, disappeared or are just keeping their heads above water. What is evident is that we are inextricably connected to the rivers and species that inhabit them. We bring them into our favorite past times and hope our teams exhibit their characteristics. These rivers and species are a part of who we are. Yet we have lost over 4/5ths of our freshwater biodiversity since 1970 and almost 1/3rd of our freshwater ecosystems.
Freshwater conservation can take a valuable lesson from sports teams. They must be resilient, you can’t be at the top of your game all the time, every sports fan knows this. In order to change their trajectory every sports team needs a plan. I’ll use an example: one that is extremely difficult for me to write because I’m a Manchester United fan. In the 2015–2016 season, Liverpool finished in 8th place and just 4 seasons later they are very likely to lift the championship in record breaking fashion (as well as being World and European club champions!) — all done with a very calculated plan.
Platypus, cranes, sturgeons, hippos and all the other freshwater speices and their habitats also need a plan because after an 83% drop, they are far too close to the permanent drop zone — and that would be catastrophic for them and for us.
Thankfully we do have plan, some of the world’s leading academics have put together an Emergency Recovery Plan to bend the freshwater biodiversity curve: think of this as the Sir Alex Ferguson playbook to building a winning a team! The plan itself is not rocket science but good plans rarely are. The six steps give our freshwater biodiversity a chance to improve.
1. Let rivers flow more naturally.
2. Improve water quality in freshwater ecosystems.
3. Protect and restore critical habitats.
4. End overfishing and unsustainable sand mining in rivers and lakes.
5. Prevent and control invasion by non-native species.
6. Protect free flowing rivers and remove obsolete dams.
Every good plan relies on the team to deliver it and #TeamFreshwater includes all of us — governments, businesses, investors and society at large — because freshwater is critical for all of us. If freshwater places and species didn’t mean so much to us we wouldn’t continue to connect our favorite pastimes to them as much as we do. And if we don’t act now to save freshwater biodiversity, we’ll lose much more than just some sporting mascots. We’ll lose our life support systems.
But we still have a chance. 2020 is a critical year. So let’s get behind our freshwater teams — and freshwater biodiversity in general.
