2 Dollars - Elizabeth II Formosan Landlocked Salmon

The Formosan landlocked salmon (Oncorhynchus masou formosanus) is one of the rarest salmonids on earth, a glacial relict population isolated in the upper Chichiawan River of central Taiwan since the last ice age. By 2002 its wild population had collapsed to somewhere between 200 and 500 individuals. Cook Islands had no particular connection to the species — this was one of many wildlife-themed issues produced under license for the collector market, a revenue stream the islands leaned on heavily throughout the 1990s and 2000s.