U.S. Geological Survey | American Fisheries Society

Imperiled Freshwater Organisms of North America

This website provides access to maps and lists of imperiled freshwater organisms of North America as determined by the American Fisheries Society (AFS) Endangered Species Committee (ESC). At this website, one can view lists of animals by freshwater ecoregion, by state or province boundary, and plot distributions of these same creatures by ecoregions or political boundaries.

Both the AFS and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have a long standing commitment to the advancement of aquatic sciences and sharing that information with the public. Since 1972, the ESC has been tracking the status of imperiled fishes and aquatic invertebrates in North America. Recently, the fish (2008) and crayfish (2007) subcommittees provided revised status lists of at-risk taxa, and the mussel and snail subcommittees are in the process of completing similar revisions. Historically, the revised AFS lists of imperiled fauna have been published in Fisheries. With rapid advances in technology and information transfer, there is a growing need to provide to stakeholders immediate and dynamic data on imperiled resources. The USGS is a leader in aquatic resource research that effectively disseminates results from those studies to the public through print and internet media. A Memorandum Of Understanding formally establishes an agreement between the AFS and USGS to create this website that will serve as a conduit for information exchange about imperiled aquatic organisms of North America. This website is interactive which allows visitors to provide information for consideration by the AFS committees about distributions, status, or threats to listed or proposed taxa on lists.