World Wildlife Fund

Day Six: Dolphin Communities
Today, we visit the local communities along the stretch of the river. For the most part, the communities that WWF works with are fishing villages that have relied for centuries on the river for their survival. The WWF Mekong Dolphin project is focused on setting up sustainable livelihood programs to deter over-fishing in these areas and to create incentives for local communities to care about dolphin conservation. One of the best ways to do this is ecotourism or more appropriately, dolphin tourism!

The houses in the villages are all on stilts due to seasonal rising of the river – already the water is close to the top of the stilts. With us is Or Channy, the executive director of the Cambodian Rural Development Team (CDRT) who works closely with Richard. As part of the sustainable development projects, Channy shows us various project activities around the village including a water pump and a fisheries pond that an enterprising villager has set up with co-financing from the project. Instead of fishing in the river, he now fishes from the pond and unlike most fishermen, he has a more secure and reliable livelihood.

There are two major concerns worrying Richard and Channy. Originally, when the tourism regulations were firmed up by the dolphin project, CDRT and Tourism Dept., the community in Kampi received 40% of the dolphin area entrance fee and participated in dolphin ecotourism decision making through a committee. This 40% share was used to fund community development projects. Recently, this system has been discontinued by the government authority which has taken charge of the project. Now, only a few villagers that operate tourist boats or sell goods to tourists at the site benefit from tourism. This takes away the economic incentive for villagers to cooperate with WWF since people no longer benefit from dolphin conservation. Moreover, the villages upstream that are located adjacent to dolphin habitat have restrictions imposed on their fishing activities by the government but don't receive any benefits from tourism. Consequently, they feel left out when comparing themselves to Kampi.

D espite this, WWF has made great strides here. Local fishermen have begun to switch to more sustainable fishing methods instead of gillnets. Gillnets are the most common fishing method, cheap, easy to use and indiscriminately catch dolphins, baby giant catfish and seven-stripe barb. Gillnets are particularly responsible for the rapid population depletion of giant fish species. Of special interest to us are deep pools; areas in the river where fish breed and feed during dry seasons and dolphins in particular are limited to during low waters. WWF is working to limit the use of gillnets in these deep pools and talking with some of the local fishermen, I see that they are too. Over the course of the last few years, they can see the fish disappearing in front of their eyes. They are as keen as we are to protect the remaining fish populations; it is their future.