Connect Fish, the project for a management and conservation of the Spanish fish communities, celebrates its first anniversary

The project Connect Fish is about to complete the first of its two and a half years of existence. Therefore, last Friday some of its members had a meeting where the state of the research and the next actions to be developed were presented.

This project seeks to optimize decision making in the management and conservation of Spanish fish communities. To achieve this, it evaluates how dams affect Iberian fish using a approach multidisciplinary . Connect Fish studies the siting of future dams or the demolition of existing dams at different geographical scales and under different perspectives.

For David Galicia, researcher of the BIOMA Institute, this project will make it possible "to have tools to maximize the management of the resources, which is a clear benefit for society". For his part, José Barquín, researcher of the Institute of Environmental Hydraulics of Cantabria, adds that "combining knowledge of fish species and the Spanish river structure is a perfect tandem for our organizations".

This project closes its first year of collecting and interpreting information to begin the process of analysis and obtaining results. "From now on we will analyze the impact of these obstacles on natural populations, being able to observe to what extent these networks of obstacles are detrimental to the viability of the populations," says Galicia.

Connect Fish has the support of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic challenge (MITECO) at framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), funded by the European Union - NextGenerationEU.