Conservation and Restoration of Aquatic Animal Habitats

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of the Nature-Positive Initiative has been spread over many countries/regions to supplement the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework with a target for reaching a net global nature-positive status by 2030 and a goal for global nature recovery by 2050. The overall resolution, however, requires an assembly and accumulation of local actions.

Humans use land areas for cities, agriculture, and industries, exploiting biological and water resources in aquatic areas. Aquatic ecosystems are greatly affected by humans. Our activities place heavy burdens on rivers, lakes, and oceans, the accumulation of which will cause an Anthropocene mass extinction.

There are aquatic-animal-conservation activities run in various sectors by scientists, national/local governments, and citizens. However, the needs of ad hoc strategies depending on the target organisms, habitat types, and factors contributing to their decline have made it difficult to output substantial progress. Progress is also hindered by the difficulty of incorporating dynamic ecosystem-transition processes into rehabilitation techniques. In addition, conservation and restoration activities are influenced by the type of enrolled organizations, local legal systems, and social customs of the area. These technical and institutional conflicts constrain activities aimed at our coexistence with nature.

We hereby launch a Special Issue in the journal Animals entitled "Conservation and Restoration of Aquatic Animal Habitats", and call for research papers on related cutting-edge strategies, including AI-assisted design/prediction and case reports on activities conducted locally or globally. Case reports are welcome not only with successful results but especially those with negative results. The lessons learned from those negative results will help further technical developments. We hope this issue will contribute broadly to progress and knowledge sharing in the conservation and restoration of aquatic animal habitats

Dr. Yasufumi Fujimoto
Dr. Kenji Saitoh
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• AI-assisted design/prediction
• case report
• conservation
• local to global action
• nature positive
• nature recovery
• lessons from negative result
• rehabilitation technology
• resilience
• restoration activities