WII focus on conservation of aquatic fauna

Jotirmay Thapliyal

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Tribune News Service

Dehradun, July 12

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, is establishing the Ganga Aqualife Conservation Monitoring Centre for conservation of aquatic fauna in the Ganga.

The centre comes as part of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, initiated by the Union Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation through its project ‘Biodiversity Conservation and Ganga Rejuvenation’.

Only a few know that the Ganga with a length of over 2,000 kilometers is one of the rivers of the country to have rich aqua life. It is even home to the highly endangered species like Gangetic dolphin. The holy river basin contains high biodiversity with over 140 species of fish.

The proposed Ganga Aqualife Conservation Monitoring Centre will work at multiple levels to build a scientific knowledge base on aquatic wildlife of the Ganga river basin through survey and field observations.

Significantly, the centre will also be coming up with policy briefs as per the needs of aquatic fauna in planning and execution of water development projects, a thing least considered in the past while undertaking such projects in the Ganga. The centre will also promote sustainable utilisation of goods and services provided by the riverine ecosystem by developing stake of local communities in conservation efforts.

Collaborating with national and international agencies for conservation of aquatic biodiversity and disseminating knowledge on the biodiversity of the Ganga to the general public and scientific community through media will be some other responsibilities to be carried out by the Ganga Aqualife Conservation Monitoring Centre.

WII Director Vinod Mathur said apart from setting up of the Ganga Aqualife Conservation Monitoring Centre, the Biodiversity Conservation and Ganga Rejuvenation project included planning aquatic species restoration for the Ganga river, community-based conservation programmes for species restoration, setting up and upgrade of rescue and rehabilitation centres at identified sites in the Ganga states, capacity enhancement of local communities in rescue and release operation, capacity enhancement of personnel of the forest department and field veterinarians.