Highlight a place to call home - BorneoTalk Official Website

Tourism – Product
caviar
the ecosystem. The government
launched an international programme
with Australian CSIRO to look into
mitigating the problem and finding
ways to ensure that the species will
continue to flourish in the rivers in
Sarawak.
Amongst the many activities of the
action plan were artificial breeding,
cyro-preservation, genetic studies,
fish trapping, diseases, pathology and
toxicology studies. Another area was
fry production and culture, which
looked into reseeding, pond cultivation
and improvements to the existing
facilities of Terubok research at Lingga
fishery Station. On the human resource
aspects, there were capacity building of
expertise in scientific and management
fields, educational activities and hosts
of public awareness programs to drum
up support and understanding of
the issues as well as inputs to further
strengthen the programs.
After a number of years, the various
programs began to show more
positive results, especially in the
awareness building among the
local fishing communities. It also
revealed that for any local project to
be successful, the local stakeholders
must be active participants to
overcome shortcomings while
providing the necessary channels to
solve conflicts between individuals
and groups through dialogue and
consensus. On the other hand,
successful programs also need full
support from the government and
related agencies working together
for a common good and goal.
In the case of Terubok, the Ministry
of Modernization of Agriculture,
Department of Agriculture Sarawak,
were the main members heavily
involved and committed to the
program which led to its success.
There are still a myriad of things
to do for the rehabilitation of the
Terubok in Sarawak and these include
working in close cooperation with
other states/nations within Borneo,
regular checks on landings of fish
and regular dialogues between the
interested parties. There have even
been suggestions on the possibilities
of engaging neighbours to jointly
conduct research on Terubok while
others believe that education should
be emphasized more at all levels to
achieve the goal of future success in
the species.
For further information, kindly contact
Inland Fisheries Production, Research & Training Centre,
Semariang Batu, Petra Jaya, 93050 Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
Tel: +6082 440196 Fax: +6082 443289
Apr-Jun2012BorneoTalk | 23