People's perception on the status of fisheries resources and habitats in Mahanadi River Basin

An understanding of the perceptions of fisherfolks can complement biological and habitat studies undertaken by the scientists and help in making effective action plans to design or improve conservation efforts. Therefore, perception of local fishing communities towards the status of fisheries resources and habitats was studied in the Mahanadi river basin-a major inter-state east flowing rivers in the peninsular India, covering its entire main channel and six major tributaries in the upper and lower basins namely, Sheonath, Hasdeo, Mand, Ib, Tel and Ong. A total of 16 primary field surveys were conducted and 99 river sites were explored for assessment of fish diversity in the whole Mahanadi basin. In this paper, results of 770 respondents are presented. People's perception revealed a clear reflection of the decline of natural fisheries resources in the rivers of the basin studied, despite the fact that rivers of the Mahanadi basin possess rich diversity of fish species. This could be due to reduced abundance and reduced sizes of some of the commercially important fish species, in the riverine fisheries resources, as reported by the fisherfolks, and also recorded in our biological studies. A range of causes mainly representing habitat degradation & ecological alterations, anthropogenic causes and climatic factors, were perceived by the fisherfolks to be responsible for decline in fisheries resources and impacting their sustainability in the rivers studied.