This summer Rare Pride Program Manager Brooke Sadowsky traveled to a World Wildlife Fund sponsored Pride campaign site in Mongolia. Read her blog and meet some of the local leaders and stakeholders involved in a campaign to save the giant taimen fish as they work to solve some of Mongolia’s greatest conservation challenges from the ground up!

Sain Banuu!!! (Traditional Mongolian greeting). My name is Brooke Sadowsky and I’m a Pride Program Manager for Rare’s English training region. I’m managing two new Pride campaigns based in Mongolia and recently returned from my first site visit to the region. Mongolia is a unique place and the campaigns I had a chance to experience inspired me to write down the highlights so I could share them with you!

Mongolia is a country sandwiched between Russia and China, two huge empires. Not many people know that it is an independent country and it is often confused with Inner Mongolia, which is based in China. But thanks to Chinggis Khan (it’s actually not pronounced Genghis there), Mongolia was united as a nation hundreds of years ago. Our Western perception is that Chinggis was a brutal and merciless warrior; but Mongolian reality is that he was a great leader that wanted to stop civil fighting and become one, unified nation. He is REVERED in Mongolia.

Mongolia has a national population of 2.7 Million people. 1 Million of them live in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, while the rest are scattered across this large country. As you head into the countryside, it becomes less and less populated. There are small town centers where populations will gather (around 1,000 – 2,000 people) with many families living in gers stretching out into the deep countryside, miles apart from one another.

It is a country with its own unique and special heritage, yet has often been overshadowed by it’s neighbors. In fact, Soviet communist rule just ended in 1990. 1990! And thrust this nation into its current state of transition, trying to rebuild itself after so many years of communist rule.

The specific site of the Pride campaign I visited is located along the Onon River, which is one of 4 Mongolian rivers supported by a longer river, the Amur-Heilong River, that flows through Mongolia, Russia, and China. The Amur-Heilong is known as the 9th longest river in the world, and the longest Salmon river in Asia.

We are working with six districts, called soums, that are located along the Onon River – each soum occupied by roughly 1,500 – 2,000 citizens. Each soum has a local government with environmental inspectors, mayors, governors, and parliament speakers.  Each of these six soums are already committed to protecting the natural land and water surrounding their sites, and are great allies for our Pride campaign.

The Onon River is also home to one of the world’s largest Salmon relative, the taimen (Hucho taimen). Taimen populations used to stretch all the way from Eastern Europe to Japan, but is now only found in Northern Mongolia mostly due to over-fishing in Russia and China. This is a trend we would like to stop within the Onon, which is considered to be one of the last remaining strongholds for this species. But I will tell you more about the species in a second, first let me tell you what else makes the Onon River special.

Yes, back to Chinggis Khan! This statue and corresponding totem are located in Dadal, one of the six soums we are working in, which is considered to be the birthplace of Chinggis Khan. People come all over the world to see this site, simply because it’s where Chinggis came from and believed to be where he brainstormed his most complex strategies to unite the country.

When Rare talks about using Pride to motivate communities to act in more environmentally-friendly ways, we dream of working at sites like this. Within these soums exist a traditional respect, pride, and wonderment about Chinggis and his legacy. Our goal is to tap into these deeply rooted, and positive, feelings to inspire the community to protect the land where Chinggis once lived. Powerful stuff.

Here is what the taimen looks like. Not exactly the warm, fuzzy mascot species you may be used to seeing from Pride campaigns – but it is a local treasure along the Onon River and in great need of protection.

Taimen are the top predator in this fresh water ecosystem – they’ve been known to prey on anything from other fish (including other taimen) to small ducks and rodents that find their way into the water.  And being top predator also means they are an important indicator of a healthy water ecosystem – an increase or decrease in their numbers can throw off the entire balance of species. Today, the stocks of all Hucho species are drastically decreasing around the world due to water pollution, intensive poaching/hunting and over-fishing.

Taimen typically stay in one place and only migrate during specific seasons which makes them easy prey for fishermen to locate and harvest. I should mention here that Taimen are not being fished for subsistence – fish is not a natural part of a Mongolian diet – rather they are fished as trophy prizes (I saw several Taimen heads hanging inside Mongolian homes) or in exchange for money by a taimen trader bringing the rare delicacy to the capital city (which is a very new trend).

Our goal for this campaign is to increase the Taimen population in Mongolia’s Onon River by 10-20% by 2010.

Our partner in this project is World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – Mongolia. Here is the team that is based in Dadal and is focused on creating community-based natural resource management and small business enteprises along the Onon River soums. Our Pride campaign is married to these initiatives as the community engagement arm.

Please allow me to introduce the team (from left to right): Ganaa (Pride campaign manager), Davaa, Chin-bat, me, Nadaa, and BB (Gaana’s supervisor). Everyone on this team grew up in one of the six local Onon communities. This was done strategically to enhance the team’s understanding of the site, the community and their behaviors. It also lends itself to sustainability as each individual is deeply invested in the work they’re doing and the community they’re working with.

The Pride campaign is building tremendous capacity within this team. Gaana engages each member of his team for his campaign milestones. Chin-bat, who is the other community liaison on the team, worked side-by-side with Gaana during his stakeholder meetings. More recently, the entire team provided feedback and input into the Quantitative survey of the community, and it’s being implemented in conjunction with the team’s natural-resource management workshops. I am greatly inspired by their teamwork and look forward to seeing everyone working together on the campaign materials.

Gankhuyag “Gaana” Balbar is the Pride campaign manager for the Onon River site. Gaana, as an individual, continues to amaze and inspire me every day. Each day on our trip, we learned something new about Gaana; something that only made our respect for him triple. We knew when he first joined the cohort that he was once the Governor of the Dadal soum – the youngest governor ever to be elected at the age of 25. What we didn’t know was that as the governor, Gaana was directly responsible for creating the Onon-Balj National Park that covers nearly 416,000 hectares of forest, grassland, and river areas. And once the park was created, Gaana became the National Park Director and ran its administration for 4 years. He also spent a few years working in the Eastern steppe grasslands, the location of our other Mongolian Pride campaign, monitoring gazelle populations with Kirk Olson (WCS gazelle specialist) and creating a local organization called the Eastern Mongolia Community Conservation Association. This organization works closely with the community to help manage their livestock populations while training them to protect their natural resources.

Gaana knew everyone in the communities we visited, from the unemployed fisherman to the parliament speaker and police chief. Citizens from all around would come out of the buildings, or stop their tasks, to shake Gaana’s hand and catch up. As his supervisor said to us, “even the dogs bark when they hear Gaana’s name.” We saw that happen too.

Community members are extremely warm and friendly. Here some community members are gathered to watch the end of a local horse race, which we found out about as a man on a horse ran through the town center yelling “they’re coming back!” (in Mongolian, of course.) Mixed in this group are school teachers, children, government officials, park rangers, fishermen, herders, and more – they do not separate from one another – they are a united community.

They also have great understanding and compassion for their land and animals. They grew up here, they’ve seen the land change, and they are concerned. But what they don’t have are solutions.

WWF-Mongolia’s Dadal office has already done a lot of work with this community to understand what is working and where solutions are needed. That is why they are placing special emphasis on creating community managed areas so they can transfer land ownership to the community. And why training in natural resource management is a key factor, so once the community has ownership over the land, they can be empowered make informed decisions about how to use those resources. And the pressing need for more income among a very poor community that is dedicated to working hard, is why WWF is piloting small business enterprises among these sites. The community understanding, engagement, and motivation provided by Gaana’s Pride campaign will help these initiatives take hold and mobilize the community to protect the Onon ecosystem.

Specifically, we need to get local fishermen like Bayarjargal (above) to stop catching and keeping Taimen. It’s permissible to catch and release Taimen; in fact, fly-fishing is a huge sport in Dadal and brings dozens of very wealthy international tourists to the site every year. But it is not legal to remove taimen from the water completely, and each soum government has agreed to support and enforce this law. But the behavior has not yet changed at the local level.

So, why would Bayarjargal, a local school librarian, catch and keep a taimen when he is already receiving a steady salary? Maybe he doesn’t know that he shouldn’t keep it? Maybe it’s so much fun catching the fighting predator fish that it’s hard to stop? Maybe he doesn’t know the difference between a taimen and a carp? Maybe the $20 paid by a taimen trader is just too tempting to pass up? Maybe the taimen trader is his cousin and he can’t say no to him? Maybe all his friends do it, so he goes along with them? The reality is that all these reasons contribute to his behavior – it’s not linear and it’s not simple – like all human behaviors (don’t most Americans gamble for these exact same reasons?)

We believe that that Pride campaign, combined with WWF’s great efforts on community-based natural resource management and small business development, will be the necessary steps to ensure long-term shifts in awareness, attitudes, and behaviors towards saving the taimen and its surrounding resources.

>>Learn about other Rare Pride campaign sites

>>Read Rare Pride success stories

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Fisheries Fellows, a Mexican based program which trains biologists and oceanographers to give local fishers tools to become sustainable, recently had one of its fellows speak at an international conservation conference. Salvador Rodriguez Van Dyke, a Rare Fisheries Fellow, talks about his experience working with fishers in Mexico and at the biannual conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in England.

It was 9:47 in the morning this past July and room 208 was almost full, or at least it seemed to be. The themes presented at the “Managing Complex Commons” session attracted a good crowd. It was the last day of the biannual conference in Cheltenham, England, organized by the International Association for the Study of the Commons.I was the fifth and last presenter in that session and my turn had come.

I bet you can imagine my nerves: being at my first global conference and having a short 15-minunte presentation, in English, following all these researches, Ph.D students and academics — and me a beginner on the “Commons” topics. Fikret Berkes and E. Pinkerton, two of the most well-known international fisheries ‘gurus’, were in the room. Last year, I started reading some of their publications and since then I had become, kind of, a fan of theirs. So there was some excitement too.

In my presentation, I shared my experience of the Fisheries Fellows program — living for 18 months in the rural village of Agua Verde, Mexico, some results to date, and how important it is to focus on short-term goals so the long-term goal (i.e. sustainable fisheries) can become a reality.

Participants from Latin America who attened the conference

There’s an article that I’ll share with you soon that was created in collaboration with Amy Hudson Weaver, of the Mexican conservation organization Niparaja, and Cynthia Mayoral Brown, Rare’s Director of the Fisheries Fellows program. The presentation of this article in the conference was congratulated and some people were amazed about the time and resources we are investing in the Fisheries Fellows Program.

There were only two questions at the end. “How was your introduction to the community? …I mean how did the fishermen receive you?” and the other referred to the time when the fellow leaves the community “how are you going to ensure that the job you are doing keeps on…”.

My introduction into the community was easy. The community was expecting a fellow because the program did a survey and worked with the community before we arrived. But, I think the personalities of the fellows had a lot of influence. I can tell you now that I felt accepted from the very first moment I began. Now the fishers I worked with are like family to me.

Answering the second question was a little bit tough, but that’s something that we have been thinking about since the program started. We are trying to build capacities and increase knowledge so in the future the fishermen keep growing by themselves.

That week in England was one of the most interesting moments in my life, in my career as an Oceanographer and/or as a Fisheries fellow. I had the chance to talk to people all around the world, working in such different areas, like forestry, atmosphere, water, waste and even with the internet — but all regarding the common resources view.  I think all fisheries fellows are just beginning, but we should be proud that we’re addressing one of the global challenges and hopefully, if it succeeds, the Fisheries Fellows Program can be replicated in another part of the world.

Fisheries fellow Salvador Rodriguez Van Dyck describes his work in the small village of Agua Verde in Baja California Sur.

Seven months have passed since the beginning of the Fisheries Fellows program, and we’ve already spent three months in our communities, working on our site assessment and project plans. I’m working in Agua Verde in Baja California Sur, an isolated community in the peninsula, with no electricity and no water pipeline system. The people over here, instead, use solar cells and a spring for water. Around 250 people are living here (plus me), and their incomes depend mostly from the fish but also from the livestock.

Salvador Rodriguez Van Dyck, left, with fishermen. 

This combination of people who work in the sea and in the field with farm animals, just a few meters from the coastline, makes this place unique. It is so tuned with the combination of the desert and ocean of the peninsula that I just love these landscapes.

At this point, considered just the beginning, each fellow has been through different situations. The first months were dedicated to earning the confidence of the local people and trying to understand the dynamic of the community. Some of us are still working on the trust—something we need to be careful with because all we can gain in one month can disappear in one day. Anyway, we’re doing okay.

In my case, I’m working with fishermen in their legal processes, so they can be legally recognized as a cooperative by the government. And when I say “with fishermen” I mean it. I’ve gone with some of them to La Paz and Loreto for some administrative proceedings, which has been an excellent time for them to learn about this kind of procedure and a chance to let me know them better. 

Before finishing, I’ll use some of Paul Butler’s words, hoping he’s okay with that. He inspired most of us, and I really want to share some of what he told us.

“The people hardly remember the second or the third one, but they will always remember the first one,” Paul said at the beginning of the program and, after five months, he’s still saying it. I’m so grateful for his words. He’s right! We (the fisheries fellows) are pioneers in this kind of job, and we’re hoping and doing our best, so the program can obtain good results. As beginners we also have great responsibilities and maybe harder work.

“Edmund Hillary didn’t know the way to the top of Everest, but he climbed it. And do you know what the best thing he did was? He left his metal gears all the way up, so the next one could climb more easily,” Paul said. And I feel that a path has already been started.

There’s a Spanish singer, Joan Manuel Serrat, who says: “Caminante no hay camino se hace camino al andar” (“Traveler, there’s no path, you make it when you walk”). Now the question is: will someone follow us?

Fernando Garcia, Rare’s Manager, Ecotourism Promotion, reports on his teaching stint at the Fisheries Fellows program in Baja California Sur.

I spent a week at the Fisheries Fellows training course, teaching site assessment, a personal passion. We talked about a basic question: How can we improve small-scale fisheries and at the same time promote marine biodiversity conservation? During this process I was thinking about similar questions, like “Can well planned ecotourism do something to preserve a valued threatened species? What is the major threat for it?”  Complexity, uncertainty, and limited resources are common obstacles to respond to those questions and reflect the underlying difficulties of many environmental challenges.

But in the rich menu of Rare’s tools developed to support local conservationists, site assessment is fascinating for me. Well, it is more that a tool, it is a process that involves several methodologies and tools. During the week I was teaching it to the fellows, they all had different ways of seeing how it could help them.

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The Fisheries Fellows project helps me to apply the knowledge that I gained through my studies. As Fellows, we are not only doing research, we are giving a use to that research. The results of the research we conduct during out studies usually ends up on a shelf in the University library – being used by no one. Rare’s Fisheries Fellows Program will allow me to develop an understanding of the social aspects related to fisheries, understanding fisheries issues as the integration of many factors: people, markets and the biological resource, without focusing solely on fish dynamics.

Opportunities such as this one are not always available, so when you have a chance like this you have to go for it. For me, one of the best experiences of the 11 week training course was the opportunity of meet the organizations of the Northwest Pacific Mexican Lobster Fishery – a great example of community collaboration that brings benefits to all while insuring a sustainable fishery.

We seven fellows of the first generation are multidisciplinary professionals, with different views of the real situation of fisheries in Mexico, but with the same goal of helping community fishers to understand the importance of the sustainable use of the resources for their own benefit. (Ivan Martínez Tovar, Fisheries Fellow, has just completed his 11-week training course and is moving to Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, to begin work on the program.)

It takes a certain kind of person to be motivated to leave a familiar place and move hundreds or thousands of miles to live in an isolated, rural community with few facilities in the hopes of helping other people live better. I know because I did it myself, but that was thirty years ago! I was anxious to meet the seven pioneers of our Fisheries Fellows Course who were about to commit to spending two years working with small scale fishermen in Baja Mexico.

As they struggled off buses that brought them to Baja — 17 hours I believe one of them had spent on the bus —  I could see they were weary from their journey but incredibly enthusiastic about what was to come. To give just one example: the tall, slim 23-year-old Salvador Rodríguez Van Dyck, who will be working in Agua Verde. What he lacks in years he more than makes up for in enthusiasm. I have a sneaking suspicion he is going to be a star.

Watching them settle in to the beautiful little La Damiana Inn (Loreto), I felt a huge sense of privilege seeing the group as they begun their ten weeks of studies that will launch them as Fellows. I could not help but be inspired by Omar, Salvador, Raquel, Pablo, Dulce, Adriana and Ivan and be incredible proud of my staff Cynthia Mayoral and Constanza Santa Anna, who had made it all happen.

More than 45 Mexican university graduates completed an arduous fellows application process, that for one committed individual involved driving 44 hours to the interview! Of these, seven were selected to join the pilot program. I was anxious to meet these pioneers — the first of what we hope will become a movement. 

The Fisheries Fellows concept is simple: take a group of young, dynamic Mexicans, train them intensively in project management, community planning, and conflict resolution, and then transition them to a small fishing community where they can teach their skills. Rare will provide each fellow with a mentor that is intimately familiar with the site and trusted by its residents. While the concept is simple, the goal is ambitious and challenging: to organize and improve the administration of community cooperatives, legalize their fishing status, and develop tools for sustainable management. 

Building trust, transferring skills and living in often isolated communities with limited facilities will be a life-changing experience for the group of young fellows. It will hopefully be a win-win situation for all. For the local fishermen, they will have a trained expert living and working among them who can help them improve the management of their fishery; for the fellow they will gain practical experience and understand the difficulty of putting theory into practice.

It’s bloody hot in Baja, Northwest Mexico, at this time of the year. I’m in Loreto on the peninsula’s eastern coast, drenched in sweat and trying to survive in 35 degrees C. I’m here to witness the launch of Rare’s latest program – Fisheries Fellows.

As Rare’s Vice President of Programs I have the pleasure of spending half of my life on a plane visiting amazing places seeing our programs in action, making a difference in the world’s most biodiverse places. Today I’m in Baja California Sur.

Northwest Mexico is home to more than 30,000 small-scale fishermen, who provide 50-70 percent of the volume and value of the nation’s catch. The coastal marine environment of the region, which includes the Pacific coast of the Baja Peninsula and the Gulf of California, owes its remarkable biological diversity to a combination of habitats including salt marsh and mangrove wetlands, island archipelagos, eelgrass and algae beds, and the northernmost coral reef in the Eastern Pacific. Deep ocean trenches and nutrient rich shallow sea beds make it one of the most important areas in the world for both commercial and sport fishing. This stretch of sea is home to one-third of Earth’s marine species.

It is also a marine biodiversity hotspot under threat. Pollution, tourism development and insufficient freshwater flows threaten these rich coasts and marine ecosystems, as do intense fishing and the deregulation of Mexico’s commercial fisheries industry.

The line of brown pelicans ponderously skimming the wave tops seem to face no problems fishing the shores of northwest Mexico. The same cannot always be said for the area’s disorganized and disenfranchised fishers, who face bureaucratic administrative systems, lack of law enforcement, low prices, ineffective marketing, and minimal technical support. Many use unsustainable fishing gear and practices, and all of these problems are putting the region’s biological heritage is at risk, as well as the lifestyles and livelihoods of its people. Rare and its colleagues at local NGOs COBI and Niparajá believe they may have a project that can help, and that’s what I’m here to see.