Justification of the Scopes of the Reclamation Works on the Irva Lakes is Ongoing
The Silver Taiga Foundation ecologists have finished the field works on the Irva Lakes, aimed at evaluation of the scope of the reclamation works necessary for cleaning of these lakes.
The Irva Lakes are very important for the local population. Five of them have the fishing grounds leased by the Glotovo branch of the AgroUdora Cooperative. Here the residents of the village, members of the cooperative, are engaged in authorized fishing of pike, perch and other species of the local ichthyofauna according to the allocated quotas. The last year expedition along the Irva made by the Silver Taiga together with the cooperative members has shown bogging and overgrowing of the river and its tributaries, which results in deterioration of food potential and consequently transformation and degradation of fish resources. This fact was taken into consideration at planning of the activities within the framework of the Model River Mezen project for the year 2015. The expedition that was arranged in August is just the first step in the direction of the recovery of the former potential of the Irva Lakes.
Floating along the edge of the vegetation, the participants of the expedition outlined the overgrowth for further transfer of this information to the maps of the lakes in order to get the actual areas, which are almost lost for fishing and therefore require clearing. Besides, directly on the spot, on each of the lakes, the ecologists described the overgrowth, because the character of the reclamation works depends on the type of vegetation prevailing in this or that area. For example, a cow lily or a water lily require mowing, whereas a hornweed or a duckweed just need to be collected, not mowed down, because they have no roots and just float in the water body.
– Now using the GIS programs we will calculate the surface of the overgrown areas for each lake – the ecologist Nikolay Shilov says. – And we will justify the necessity to include these volumes into the plans of the reclamation works of FSBI “Komirybvod”. The scope of the future works is, unfortunately, very wide and, to be honest, is simply frightening. Why? Because they are incomparably wider than those annual planned volumes which are normally “handed down” to “Komirybvod”. For example, last year they cleared about one hectare of the surface of one of the lakes – and that’s all. That is they simply made one “window”, which quickly gets overgrown again… Incomparably higher volumes of reclamation works are needed… Anyhow, we will prepare justification and think what to do next.
