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Mekong
Off the Beaten Path; My Cambodia Travel Log
Dekila is the WWF US leader for the Greater Mekong Program. The Greater Mekong Program consists of three Global 200 ecoregions; the Mekong river, the Lower Mekong Dry Forests and the Greater Annamites and covers six countries; China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. This ecoregion complex is one of WWF US's priorities due to the incredible endemic biodiversity found there; whether it is the Mekong Giant Catfish, the largest freshwater fish in the world, or the Douc Langur, possibly the most charismatic primate in the world.
Dekila is from Sikkim, a tiny northeastern state in India the size of Rhode Island which is squished between Nepal and Bhutan. Like every other person from the Himalayas, she is convinced that her homeland is the original Shangrila. Her family is Bhutia, of Tibetan origin and she speaks Sikkimese, the local language, as well as Tibetan, Hindi and Nepali fluently. She worked in the WWF Eastern Himalayas Program for five years prior to working on the Greater Mekong. Her areas of expertise include strategic conservation planning, community based conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Among her most prized skills is the ability to eat anything remotely edible.
Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 14 and 15 | Last Day
Day Six: Dolphin CommunitiesToday, 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.Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 14 and 15 | Last Day
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