How to Manage the River Sustainably?
The workshop on methods of aquatic bioresources control and its practical use was held on October, 31st in Glotovo village (Udora district of Komi). Members of the local branch of «AgroUdora» cooperative participated in the workshop.
As is known, the population of Glotovo village and near-by villages is combined into a cooperative and pursues a fishery according to quotas on the floods of Irva river – Irva lakes. The five lakes have a status of a fishing ground and they are under lease of the cooperative. But it doesn’t mean at all that they are managed sustainably.
One of the sustainable resources management criteria is to plan the fishery deliberately for a long or for a medium-term at least. In order that the fishermen have the basis for such planning and apply for a reasonable capture level, taking into consideration the state of each aquatic bioresources species, it is necessary to monitor the fishing grounds. Nowadays the volume of quotas, allocated for the fishery, is defined on the basis of not always validated expert assessment. The fishery statistics doesn’t mirror the real capture level as well.
That is why we have begun to train the rural population and first of all «AgroUdora» cooperative members in long-term river management monitoring and planning under Model River Mezen project.
The first training seminar has been prepared by Ph.D. in biological sciences Eduard Boznak и Silver Taiga ecologist Nikolai Shuktomov.
According to the proposed system the monitoring and data collection in terms of such indicators as structure and species composition of harvesting; number of commercial fishery species groups; average fish size, included into commercial landing will be arranged by fishermen themselves.
The monitoring will help to see the trends in dynamics of local fish resources state, and therefore, will contribute to reasonable management solutions, intended improvement and on time control of the fishery.
Nikolai Shuktomov is presenting the monitoring system
«AgroUdora» cooperative members are discussing the problem. November 2013
«AgroUdora» cooperative members are studying the agenda. November 2013
Valentina Semyashkina