I attended a seminar on December 2, 2010, put on by Olaf Jensen about the conservation of salmonids in Mongolia. The speaker, Olaf Jensen, graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Fisheries Sciences. A project was started while he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin that was set up to protect a species of fish, the taimen, in Mongolia. The project was and is funded by The World Bank, and it is set in the Eg-Uur Watershed in Mongolia. It is a non-governmental organization set up to develop recreational fishing in Mongolia as ecotourism, to fund aquatic ecology and fisheries research, to research conservation in the area, and to fund conservation law enforcement. Dr. Jensen studied whether recreational fishing is compatible with conservation and also evaluated taimen movements with respect to the river ecosystem. He found that catch and relsease fishing would have barely any impact upon the taimen population but that commercial fishing would have a high negative impact upon the taimen population.
His studies have implications for indigenous Mongolians because it shows that commercial fishing levels would decimate the population of taimen in the area and bring few economic benefits to the people actually living in the region. His studies will be used to protect the people native to that region of Mongolia, and the taimen will be protected so the people of Mongolia can continue to fish in a sustainable fashion.
-Janet Pasko
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