Tribesmen urged to join reservoir fisheries' project

Thiruvananthapuram: Forest-dwelling scheduled tribes in the state have now been asked to form fish workers’ cooperatives inside forests to commercially farm exotic fish varieties from forest reservoirs. The Fisheries Department will “ramp up” 19 reservoirs in the state with commercially-viable carp varieties like catla, mrigal and rohu. The ‘reservoir fisheries’ project, which the Fisheries Department considers a unique means to increase inland fish productivity, is however seen by the Forest Department as environmentally suicidal.

Even then the Forest Department has given its nod to the project considering the employment opportunities it offers forest-dwelling tribes. But the Department has ensured that reservoirs in protected areas and sanctuaries – Mullaperiyar, Parambikulam, Peruvarippallam, Thoonakkadavu, Peechi Vaazhani, Chimmini, Kakkayam, Idukki, Parappar, Peppara and Neyyar – are kept out of the project. The Forest Department’s argument is that the project, which involves filling the reservoirs with exotic fish varieties, will drown out native endemic species.

“The fishes endemic to the region will be lost. The fact is a lot many local varieties of fish have already become extinct. The move will further decimate the underwater ecological balance,” a top forest department official said. Not allowing the Fisheries Department to deposit young fishes in the reservoirs of protected areas and sanctuaries will not help either, the official said. “Rivers are not static. The young ones you deposit in Malampuzha can easily be found in Parambikulam or Mullaperiyar,” he said.

An official of the Agency for Development of Aquaculture, which collects the young of exotic varieties from hatcheries and deposits them in reservoirs, say that carp varieties do not breed in the environment they are put in. “So there is no problem of these varieties crowding out the local ones,” the official added. Nonetheless, the official conceded that ADAK would have to think of ways to improve local fish varieties in these reservoirs.