Freshwater biodiversity of India: a response to Sarkar et al. (2013)

Abstract

Freshwater fish comprise one of the most threatened vertebrate groups with close to one-third of the species in danger of extinction (Dudgeon 2012) and several species already extinct (Baillie and Butcher 2012). This vulnerability has been largely attributed among others, to the poor state of knowledge (Dudgeon 2003, 2012; Cooke et al. 2012), and the uneven distribution of conservation attention and investment (Darwall et al. 2011a) on freshwater ecosystems and their resources.