Perspectives from the Global South inform and affirm the contemporary river conservation paradigm: A commentary on Feio et al.

The equitable and sustainable management of rivers is among the biggest environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. As sources of fresh water (itself essential for nearly all human enterprise), en - ergy production, wastewater conveyance, and diverse cultural uses and values, rivers are vitally important ecosystems (Brauman et al., 2014; Yeakley et al., 2016). However, the intense exploitation of these services, combined with hydrological shifts from a changing climate and extensive management to reduce flood risk, has led to widespread declines in their ecosystem condition and in riverine bio - diversity (Albert et al., 2021; Vörösmarty et al., 2010). With multiple additional stressors on rivers like invasive alien species and water quality impacts from upland land use change, the scientific commu - nity has focused on biotic indices for monitoring riverine health. The use of such indices to describe the ecological condition of a river system, termed bioassessment or biomonitoring , is intended to pro - vide an integrated perspective of the multiple potential stressors acting simultaneously on the whole ecosystem (Feio et al., 2021). By directly assessing the diversity and abundance of focal taxonomic groups, bioassessment programs provide important perspective into the quality and potential service delivery of a river system, but also a proximate measure of the local state of biodiversity. Given trends over time, such data can answer important questions about the effi - cacy of conservation policy, ecological restoration, and the manage - ment of biodiversity, supporting conservation evidence approaches. Originating in the mid- to- late 20th century, the assessment of rivers via biological indices became codified into environmen - tal laws and policies in countries like the United States,