Smalltooth sawfish
Smalltooth sawfish are extremely vulnerable to overexploitation because of their propensity for entanglement in nets, their restricted habitat, and low rate of population growth. The species is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN Red List. Historically it was found in 47 countries, but it has been extirpated from 16 and possibly extirpated from another 25, leaving only 6 countries where it certainly still survives. In terms of area this means that it certainly survives in only 19% of its historical range. It is the only sawfish that certainly still survives in the United States (the largetooth sawfish, "P. pristis", has likely been extirpated from this country), and it has been listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 2003. It is estimated that the smalltooth sawfish population in the United States now equals less than 5% of the historical population in this country. In the United States it once occurred from Texas to New York (northern range as summer visitors), but today it is essentially limited to Florida. In the Everglades region of Florida the population is now stable and possibly slowly rising. Other countries where it certainly survives are the Bahamas, Cuba, Belize, Honduras and Sierra Leone, but whether it survives in the Western Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic coast of South America is unclear. The species is listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Largetooth sawfish
The largetooth sawfish has been extirpated from many regions where formerly present. Among the 75 countries where recorded historically, it has disappeared from 28 and may have disappeared from another 27, leaving only 20 countries where certainly still present. In terms of area this means that it certainly survives in only 39% of its historical range. Only Australia still has a relatively healthy population of the species and this may be the last remaining population in the entire Indo-Pacific that is of sufficient size to be viable, but even it has experienced a decline. Other places in the Indo-Pacific where still present, even if in very low numbers, are off Eastern Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Papua New Guinea, and in the East Pacific it survives off Central America, Colombia and northern Peru. Whether it survives anywhere in Southeast Asia is generally unclear, but one was captured in the Philippines in 2014 (a country where otherwise considered extirpated). The species has disappeared from much of its Atlantic range and declined where still present. The likely largest remaining population in this region is in the Amazon estuary, but another important population is in the San Juan River system in Central America. It was once abundant in Lake Nicaragua (part of the San Juan River system), but this population rapidly crashed during the 1970s when tens of thousands were caught. It has been protected in Nicaragua since the early 1980s, but remains rare in the lake today, and is now threatened by the planned Nicaragua Canal. In West Africa, the Bissagos Archipelago has often been considered the last remaining stronghold, but interviews with locals indicate that sawfish now also are rare there.