What about the tributaries of the tributaries? Fish migrations, fisheries, dams and fishers’ knowledge in North-Eastern Thailand

ABSTRACT

The Pak Mun dam is among the most controversial hydropower projects in Thailand. However, the dam’s impacts on upriver tributaries have been neglected. We engaged fishers living in three villages along the Sebok River – a major tributary of the Mun River, upstream of the Pak Mun dam – to collect fish catch data for 24 months between 2014 and 2016. Using these data and fishers’ knowledge, the negative fishery impacts of the Pak Mun dam and the Ban Ot irrigation dam on the Sebok River were assessed. Both dams have negatively impacted Sebok River fisheries for migratory species.

KEYWORDS:

• Mekong
• fisheries
• hydropower dams
• irrigation dams
• Sebok River
• Thailand

Acknowledgments

This project would not have been possible without the tremendous support of the fishers in Thalat, Nong Yang and Dum Yai Villages, all of which are adjacent to the Sebok River. Thanks also to Surasom Krisnachuta for his support. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers and Cecilia Tortajada for useful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was mainly funded by the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation. The last stages of research has also been supported by Tracking Change: The Role of Local and Traditional Knowledge in Watershed Governance, a project based at the University of Alberta and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).