Sawfish
The pregnancy lasts several months. There are 1–23 young in each sawfish litter, which are long at birth. In the embryos the rostrum is flexible and it only hardens shortly before birth. To protect the mother the saws of the young have a soft cover, which falls off shortly after birth. The pupping grounds are in coastal and estuarine waters. In most species the young generally stay there for the first part of their lives, occasionally moving upriver when there is an increase in salinity. The exception is the largetooth sawfish where the young move upriver into freshwater where they stay for 3–5 years, sometimes as much as from the sea. In at least the smalltooth sawfish the young show a degree of site fidelity, generally staying in the same fairly small area in the first part of their lives. In the green and dwarf sawfish there are indications that both sexes remain in the same overall region throughout their lives with little mixing between the subpopulations. In the largetooth sawfish the males appear to move more freely between the subpopulations, while mothers return to the region where they were born to give birth to their own young.
Sawfish
The status of the two species of the Atlantic region, the smalltooth and largetooth sawfish, is comparable to the Indo-Pacific. For example, sawfish have been entirely extirpated from most of the Atlantic coast of Africa (only survives for certain in Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone), as well as South Africa. The only relatively large remaining population of the largetooth sawfish in the Atlantic region is at the Amazon estuary in Brazil, but there are smaller in Central America and West Africa, and this species is also found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The smalltooth sawfish is only found in the Atlantic region and it is possibly the most threatened of all the species, as it had the smallest original range (range ) and has experienced the greatest contraction (disappeared from c. 81% of its original range). It only survives for certain in six countries, and it is possible that the only remaining viable population is in the United States. In the United States the smalltooth sawfish once occurred from Texas to New York, but its numbers have declined by at least 95% and today it is essentially restricted to Florida. However, the Florida population retains a high genetic diversity, has now stabilised and appears to be slowly increasing. A Recovery Plan for the smalltooth sawfish has been in effect since 2002. It has been strictly protected in the United States since 2003 when it was added to the Endangered Species Act as the first marine fish. This makes it is "illegal to harm, harass, hook, or net sawfish in any way, except with a permit or in a permitted fishery". The fine is up to US$10,000 for the first violation alone. If accidentally caught, the sawfish has to be released as carefully as possible and a basic how-to guide has been published. In 2003 an attempt of adding the largetooth sawfish to the Endangered Species Act was denied, in part because this species does not occur in the United States anymore (last confirmed US record in 1961). However, it was added in 2011, and all the remaining sawfish species were added in 2014, restricting trade in them and their parts in the United States.