Endangered Bettas?

Are Wild Type Bettas Endangered?

Many of you may not know this but most of the wild type bettas and parosphromenus species from Indonesia and Malaysia are classified as vulnerable and endangered in the International Union for Conserving Nature(IUCN) Red List.

This is mainly caused by economical development, due to palm oil plantations.  Palm oil demands have been increasing significantly over the years and more plantations are taking over the tropical climates where many bettas and parosphromenus species come from.  You can find more information about the palm oil impacts here:

https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/palm-oil-and-biodiversity

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-malaysia-palmoil/oil-palm-plantations-destroying-se-asias-peatlands-researchers-idUSKCN0PG1UC20150706

You may wonder what we can do to help stop this, let us know when you think of something.  However, in the meantime, you can try to breed, distribute and maintain certain species so hopefully they will not go extinct even if they no longer have a home in the wild.

A customer has brought to our attention, the CARES Fish Preservation Program.  A program to help preserve many endangered species of fishes.   You can learn more here:

https://caresforfish.org/

What we, Blackwater Aquatics do is to try and educate the world about the many different types of betta species out there.  Not many know about these hidden gems in comparison to the more popular domesticated fancy bettas.  We import only a few pairs of various wild caught bettas every other month or so to distribute to enthused hobbyists in hopes that they will be successful in maintaining the species. 

Collecting these bettas from the wild has little to no impact on their survival since the impact is from the destruction of their current habitats.  Bringing in new bloodlines will hopefully keep the genetic variations in these fishes strong for as long as we can.  We also breed and maintain several species of bettas but our operations are only as big as our living rooms.  Hopefully that will one day change.

Our goal is to one day setup various biotopes for individual species and continue to maintain as many species as we can.

See below for the IUCN rating of the fishes we’ve had and currently maintain,

IUCN Red List Categories:

Data Deficient (DD) - Not enough information.

Least Concern (LC) - Not yet to be concerned about.

Near Threatened (NT) - Almost threatened.

Vulnerable (VU) - Threatened and facing a high risk of extinction in the wild.

Endangered (EN) - A very high risk of extinction in the wild.

Critically Endangered (CR) - An extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.

Extinct in the Wild (EW) - No known survival in the wild but are kept in captivity.

Extinct (EX) - Gone =(