World Wetland Day: A Commitment to Ecosystem Preservation by ICAR-CIFRI

ICAR – Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (ICAR-CIFRI) is observing World Wetland Day yesterday i.e., February 02^nd. 2025, reiterating its objective “Protecting Wetlands for Our Common Future”.

Wetlands provide essential habitats for the breeding and early life stages of many fish species. They serve as nurseries, offering shelter and abundant food for juvenile fish, which increases their chances of survival. Wetlands support diverse aquatic life, including fish and mollusks. Protecting these habitats and maintaining biodiversity of wetland will definitely fetch sustainable fish populations.

The crucial ecological role of wetlands, and their benefits to both the environment and human communities, are envisioned nationally by ICAR – CIFRI & emphasizing the need for conservation efforts due to the vulnerability of many wetlands to climatic changes and human activities.

In the order of delivering justice to the mission, ICAR-CIFRI has adopted a cluster of beel’s in North 24 Parganas and Murshidabad of West Bengal under Scheduled Caste Sub Plan for supporting beel fishers belonging to the economically challenged community through cultured based fisheries. This mission has eventually enabled the rural populace depending on the beel towards achieving a “Self-Sustained Economic Proliferation while achieving sustainable development goals.

Augmenting pisciculture from this wetland through pen culture, without affecting the biodiversity and ecology through co-management was initiated by the functional Fishers Cooperative Society. The inputs example HDPE pen, fish seed, feed and coracle were provided to the community for natural farming. Fish seeds like Indian Major Carps, Sarputi and Grass carp were stocked in pens. A growth rate of 35 – 40 grams was attained within a span of 4 months and subsequently released in wetlands.

An occasion commemorating World Wetland Day was organised at the Kulia beel of Nadia District in West Bengal with the auspicious intention of sensitizing the fishing community of the adjacent wetland.

CIFRI scientists in association with Saguna Union Fishermen Cooperative Society, Kantaganj, Nadia, under the leadership of Mr. Basanta Kumar Das, Learned Director of CIFRI has adopted the wetlands for supporting beel fishers through culture-based fisheries, successfully managed to highlight the importance and role of all different trophic levels of wetlands for different ecosystem services and emphasised the needs of important factors like river connectivity, aquatic macrophytes, etc., for the conservation of precious biodiversity of wetlands and urged the fishers to actively participate for the conservation and restoration of wetland to ensure the long-term sustainability of fish production.

More than 100 fishers actively participated in this Scientist – Farmers Interaction Meet.

Team Maverick