Like most regions, the Mekong basin lacks sufficient data on its freshwater biodiversity. This is a long-term problem rooted in a range of factors, including a lack of resources, capacity, and investment, and various challenges of collecting data. 

There is a critical need for tools that harness Traditional Ecological Knowledge and community engagement. The Mekong’s significant freshwater biodiversity and its large, complex ecosystems make data collection and analysis particularly challenging. 

Given the urgent need for more data on freshwater biodiversity in the Mekong, WWF partnered up with experts from FISHBIO to conduct and analyse eDNA studies in a range of countries and ecosystems across the region in 2024. eDNA technology was used to improve our understanding of threatened and poorly understood freshwater biodiversity in the Lower Mekong Basin – a biodiversity hotspot and the world’s largest inland fishery, but also a hotspot of risk. 

Read more by downloading the report as a PDF.