LAND-CONNECT Fish

Species connecting land and sea, such as diadromous and marine estuarine-dependent species, have often been overlooked in scientific discussions and face a growing risk of extinction due to multiple human activities both at sea and on land. Protecting them across all habitats and migratory routes that span the land-sea continuum, in a coordinated manner across sectors and countries, is urgent for effective environmental management. In response to the topic HORIZON-CL6-2026-02-FARM2FORK-08, “Advancing basic knowledge and developing tools for sustainable management of key migratory fish species,” the Land-Connect fish project, led by the French research institute INRAE with the substantial help of CNRS, aims to promote sustainable management of these species by generating and integrating new crucial knowledge about their distribution throughout their lives, their vulnerabilities to environmental and human-induced pressures, and their ecological roles. This knowledge will focus on a set of target species with diverse life cycles along the land-sea continuum. The project will improve the conservation of these vital commercial resources and the key connections they support across different environments by reducing human impacts throughout their life cycles and developing exploitation strategies at multiple scales. To fully address the Commission's request expressed in the topic, it was considered useful to include species with various connectivity patterns and scales, such as shad, lamprey, mullet, seabass, meagre, and flounder, beyond the well-known transoceanic and emblematic species like salmon and eel. We developed pillars that span four of the seven work phases in our project structure, which is essential because solutions to the challenges raised by the Commission depend on coupling ecological and management connectivity across scales, from local to global. To achieve this, we assembled 21 partners from 14 countries into an interdisciplinary consortium covering ecology, fisheries sciences, mathematical modelling, environmental economy, and social and political sciences. As requested by the topic, a co-design process will be adopted to understand stakeholders’ needs and respond to them, during both project development and implementation. Among the diverse impacts expected from the project are: the consolidation of knowledge by filling gaps in our understanding of the biology, ecology, and connectivity of key migratory species, the enhancement of biodiversity monitoring frameworks through the integration of multiple tools (telemetry, eDNA, genetics, isotope, modelling) to track wildlife species in their habitats, including migratory corridors, with a reduction of monitoring costs, improved conservation status of endangered species and local populations, and better planning of networks of well-connected protected areas through more-informed migratory connectivity metrics, alongside long-term income improvement via sustainable fisheries and promotion of new or under-rated food products (labels, gastronomy, Chefs’ engagement).