MOBILE, Ala.— The Center for Biological Diversity and 12 partner organizations petitioned NOAA Fisheries today to list the Alabama shad as an endangered species. The Alabama shad has disappeared from 90% of its range, and its few remaining populations are declining steeply.

Alabama shad were previously so abundant that they supported commercial fisheries. But today they’re rarely found across their once-vast range, which stretched from Oklahoma to Florida. Alabama shad have been completely wiped out from 60 of the 75 rivers they once inhabited.

“Alabama shad are on the brink of extinction, so they desperately need federal protection,” said Will Harlan, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These fish have fed and nourished us for millennia and they’ve been a key part of our country’s most vital and vibrant rivers, from the Mississippi to the Suwannee. We can’t let this fish go extinct on our watch.”

The Alabama shad is a slender, silvery fish that grows to 1.5 feet in length and weighs up to three pounds. Alabama shad migrate from the Gulf of Mexico upriver to spawn each year. Many of the rivers where they once migrated and spawned are blocked by dams.

In the state of Alabama, biologists have observed 98% population declines in rivers that once teemed with Alabama shad. The Alabama shad’s largest remaining population in Georgia and Florida’s Apalachicola River has crashed from 123,000 to as few as 324 fish.

Oil spills in the Gulf also have likely contributed to Alabama shad declines. Populations plummeted after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2011 and have never recovered. In November the Main Pass Oil Spill — the Gulf’s second-largest oil spill after Deepwater Horizon — spewed at least 1.1 million gallons of oil into key Alabama shad habitat near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

The Center and its partners are re-petitioning NOAA Fisheries to list the Alabama shad.

The Center previously petitioned for the fish in 2010, but NOAA Fisheries denied listing protections in 2017, claiming that conservation locking at dams would reduce harms to Alabama shad. Unfortunately, conservation locking no longer occurs at dams throughout the Alabama shad’s range, and new data has shown that populations have declined even further since 2017.

Joining the Center in the Alabama shad petition are Alabama Rivers Alliance, Healthy Gulf, American Whitewater, Cahaba Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Coosa Riverkeeper, Forest Keeper, Healthy Ocean Coalition, Mobile Baykeeper and Pearl Riverkeeper, Black Warrior Riverkeeper and Choctawhatchee Riverkeeper.

“Alabama shad will completely disappear from their few remaining rivers without urgent protections under the Endangered Species Act,” said Harlan. “The health of our rivers and communities depends on the health of this fish.”