In Peru, cockfighting is legal — and one of its traditional weapons, a spur, may be pushing an ancient species closer to extinction.
For decades, rostral teeth from the critically endangered sawfish have been carved into razor-sharp spurs used in rooster fights. Though selling sawfish parts is illegal, these spurs still circulate in informal online markets, sometimes fetching up to $250 each.
For small-scale fishers facing declining catches, a single sawfish can mean months of income. But researchers, conservationists and even leaders within the cockfighting community are now working to remove sawfish from the sport before it’s too late.
Can tradition evolve fast enough to save one of the rarest fish on Earth?
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
