River Dolphin Conservation Gets Go-Ahead
A government committee yesterday approved a draft sub-decree aimed at protecting the endangered Mekong River dolphin and will send it to the Council of Ministers within a few weeks. Among the provisions contained in the sub-decree is the creation of a 180-km-long conservation area stretching from Kratie province to the Laos border in which dolphin-endangering activity including floating houses, fishing cages and gillnet fishing will be banned in certain areas, said Touch Seng Tana, chairman of the government’s Commission for Mekong River Dolphin Conservation and Ecotourism Development. … Copies of the draft sub-decree were unavailable to the media yesterday and it was unclear how local communities living in the designated conservation zone would be affected. But Gordon Congdon, freshwater conservation manager at WWF, stressed the issue of local livelihoods had been addressed. …
