Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Are koi just goldfish?
No. Goldfish descend from Prussian carp (Carassius). Koi are ornamental common carp (Cyprinus carpio) fixed in Niigata. The atlas seeAlso cannot point at goldfish because that id is not in the taxonomy.
When did nishikigoi become a breed?
Colour mutants were kept in Yamakoshi rice-terrace ponds in the early 1800s. The 1914 Tokyo Taisho exhibition took them national.
What is the All Japan Koi Show?
The ZNA-centred championship that still sets kohaku, sanke and showa as the Gosanke core classes.
Why do Israeli and US farms matter?
After the 1960s export boom, Israeli and US growers scaled food-and-ornamental carp. Butterfly fins are largely a non-Niigata aesthetic.
What did KHV change?
Koi herpesvirus outbreaks from the late 1990s killed whole collections. Quarantine and certified-free stock became the new entry ticket.
Are escaped koi a conservation problem?
Common carp are invasive in many rivers and lakes. A show pond is secure; a flood overflow is not a garden anymore.
The koi future is a triad of climate, take and attention -- not a product roadmap.
Risk scores here track conservation pressure relative to other types. High resilience types sit in a calmer band; CR/EN types do not.
Conservation risk
Koi sits in a comparatively secure band in this atlas (resilience 94/100). Domestic and abundant; wild common carp are invasive in many basins. Resilience here means the ornamental lineage is secure, not that escaped koi are harmless.
Teaching snapshot as of September 2026 — not a live IUCN feed.
Safeguards
Listing and enforcement
CITES, ESA, RFMOs and national parks only work when patrols and papers move.
Site protection
A breeding lake, ice type or cavity tree cannot be replaced by a logo.
Prey and forage base
Seals, krill, ungulates, bamboo and sardines are the quiet half of the koi budget.
Disease and toxin watch
Ebola, KHV, TTX, lead and rodenticides are type-specific ceilings.
English-language science capacity
The field sites in the techDeep lens still train the next census -- they are a safeguard only if funded.
What monitoring automates first
Census and acoustics
Camera traps, radar and moorings already take hours that used to be only notebooks.
Trade-document checks
eBCD and permit databases can flag a loin or a skin faster than a paper file.
Outbreak mapping
Flu and Ebola desks now run on shared dashboards -- still needing a human closer.
Visitor flow
Ticketing and hide cameras can be scheduled; habituation ethics cannot be fully automated.
Structural shifts
Climate as habitat law
Ice, bleach and river heat are now listing factors, not background weather.
From fortress to corridor
National parks plus gene flow -- panda belts, tiger landscapes, wolf packs on roads.
Fame as a take risk
Nemo, Jaws, Koko and Cecil still move capture, fear and donations in the same year.
English science is not the range
The localLens is a reading aid. Range-state languages still hold the living animal.
Outlook
Near term
Expect more listings, more cameras and more conflict paperwork -- not a sudden best-species ending.
Medium term
Sites that keep forage and enforcement will hold; single-lake and single-forest types stay brittle.
Long view
The koi body plan will remain recognisable. The map of secure versus threatened populations will not.
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