Blackin cisco are alive and well

The entry for Blackfin cisco is incorrect. The IUCN listing of extinct has been known to be wrong for years but the IUCN being the enormous bureaucracy that it is and blackfin ciscos being relatively unknown creatures of uncertain taxonomic status, nothing has been changed. The assessment by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada can be found at Species at risk registry . It notes the persistence of a population in Lake Nipigon (where it is possible to eat smoked specimens). Since that time other populations have been confirmed in other lakes.

Thanks for reporting, @pmeisenheimer! I’ve added the COSEWIC records so we’ll have another check on the IUCN point of view. We just need a week or two to add some logic to the summary paragraph, so that it only displays the “extinct” statement in the absence of contradictory records. We do this occasionally with messy data categories; it seems like this one qualifies too.

Jen

1 Like

Thanks @hammockj .

The more interesting story is that blackfin cisco in individual lakes turn out to be more closely related to C. artedi in the same lake than to blackfin cisco in other lakes. They will inevitably be reclassifed from species to ecomorphotypes in the not so distant future but they are not extinct.

This fix is in at last, @pmeisenheimer. Reports of the blackfin cisco’s demise are no longer greatly exaggerated. Probably a few other out of date pages have benefitted from this fix as well :slight_smile:

Thanks again,

Jen