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  • Review Article
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Successes and failures of conservation actions to halt global river biodiversity loss

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 1, pages 104–118 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

To address the losses of river biodiversity worldwide, various conservation actions have been implemented to promote recovery of species and ecosystems. In this Review, we assess the effectiveness of these actions globally and regionally, and identify causes of success and failure. Overall, actions elicit little improvement in river biodiversity, in contrast with reports from terrestrial and marine ecosystems. This lack of improvement does not necessarily indicate a failure of any individual action. Rather, it can be attributed in part to remaining unaddressed stressors driving biodiversity loss; a poor match between the spatial scale of action and the scale of the affected area; and absence of adequate monitoring, including insufficient timescales, missing reference and control sites or insufficient selection of targeted taxa. Furthermore, outcomes are often not reported and are unevenly distributed among actions, regions and organism groups. Expanding from local-scale actions to coordinated, transformative, catchment-scale management approaches shows promise for improving outcomes. Such approaches involve identifying major stressors, appropriate conservation actions and source populations for recolonization, as well as comprehensive monitoring, relevant legislation and engaging all stakeholders to promote the recovery of river biodiversity.

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Fig. 1: Timeline of major policies affecting conservation actions in river ecosystems.
Fig. 2: Weighted averages of study outcomes for each of the nine conservation action categories at the global and continental scale.
Fig. 3: Distribution and proportion of the nine conservation action categories across 26 regions.
Fig. 4: Comparing combined stress from drivers of biodiversity loss with conservation actions across 26 regions.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the EU Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant agreement 871128 to P.H., D.C.-G. and J.S.S.) and by the Collaborative Research Centre RESIST funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) (grant CRC 1439/2 – project number: 426547801 to P.H.). M.A.P. was supported by the US National Science Foundation (award DEB-1856200). F.H. acknowledges support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (E355S122).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of River Ecology and Conservation, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Gelnhausen, Germany

    Peter Haase, Daniela Cortés-Guzmán & James S. Sinclair

  2. Faculty of Biology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Peter Haase & Ralf B. Schäfer

  3. State Key Laboratory of Black Soils Conservation and Utilization, Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Environment, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China

    Fengzhi He

  4. Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany

    Fengzhi He

  5. Institute for Environmental Sciences iES, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany

    Jonathan F. Jupke

  6. School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Tinotenda Mangadze

  7. Department of Ecology and Environmental Protection, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poznan, Poland

    Tinotenda Mangadze

  8. Neamb, Federal University of Tocantins, Porto Nacional, Brazil

    Fernando M. Pelicice

  9. Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Margaret A. Palmer

  10. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, College Park, MD, USA

    Margaret A. Palmer

  11. School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

    Robert J. Rolls

  12. Research Center One Health Ruhr, University Alliance Ruhr, Essen, Germany

    Ralf B. Schäfer

  13. Conservation Ecology Center, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, VA, USA

    Ellen A. R. Welti

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  1. Peter Haase
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Contributions

Conceptualization: P.H., J.S.S. and R.B.S. Data curation: D.C.-G. & J.S.S. Funding acquisition: P.H. Investigation: P.H., D.C.-G., F.H., J.J., T.M., F.M.P., M.A.P., R.J.R., R.B.S., E.A.R.W. and J.S.S. Methodology: D.C.-G., J.S.S. and P.H. Supervision: P.H. Visualization: P.H., D.C.-G., J.J. and E.A.R.W. Writing (original draft preparation): P.H. and J.S.S. with contributions from D.C.-G., F.H., T.M., F.M.P., M.A.P., R.B.S. and E.A.R.W. Review and editing: all authors.

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Correspondence to Peter Haase.

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Haase, P., Cortés-Guzmán, D., He, F. et al. Successes and failures of conservation actions to halt global river biodiversity loss. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 1, 104–118 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-024-00012-x

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