SAVE THE MONGOLIAN TAIMEN
- by: Isa Villanen
- recipient: Mongolian government
The Mongolian Taimen is the largest species of salmon, it is the monster trout growing up to 2 metres long and 90-100 kilos in weight. The Taimen reaches its maturity in about 8 years, and it can live up to 50 years. When mature, a Taimen female can produce about 1,000 eggs per kilo of tis wheight aday.
The Taimen is a feroucious beast, it eats all and everything from snall fish to muskrats, ducks and small mammals and it does not discriminate the younger taimen generation while feeding. When winter comes, the temperature faals down to -50C and the rivers are covered by 2 metres of ice, but the Taimen survive in deep pools, and seem to be territorial habitants in the river.
There is a Taimen Conservation Fund, a small. but active fund making yearly excursions to the rivers where the Taimen live. They have one permanent base, and when studying the rivers they ride even hundreds of kilometres to the river sites whre they expect to fin the Taimen.
They are tagging the fish, they take fin biopsies to study the genetic similarities to other trout colonies in various parts of the world. As for now, its appeance may indicate that it is a totally independent subspecies due to its size and longevity. Its colouring is also different fron ordinary trouts:even if the spotting is similar to normal trout, it has a white belly and a brilian orange red tail, and a green head huge compared to its body length. Their recent study has shown that there are aboiut 20 Taimen to every 210 kilometres of the river. That is much less than before. All trouts have different spot patterns, and can be identified from them just as humans can be identified by firnger prints.
However, there are rich gold deposits in Mongolia, and they all are distributed in Mongolian rivers. There is a massive effort to mine the gold by floating mining boats to dig up the bottom of the river and sprouting the sigfted wastewater and silt back into the river. The river banks are filled with huge piles or stones and pebbles.
The Mongolian rivers are among the last in the world with unpolluted and pristine waters so clear, that you can see the bottom from the boat 10 feet below. Mining created muddy and murky waters drifting down srteam and causing a stready and permanent pollution flow into the entire river. The monster Taimen seem to be harder to find than before, and the main reason probably is river bottom mining.
Learn more aboit the Mongolian Taimen:
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/search_wwf_news/?201567/THE-TAIMEN-CONSERVATION-STUDY-TOUR-OF-THE-ONON-RIVER-FISHING-CLUB-MEMBERS-IN-TO-THE-KHOVSGOL-AIMAG
The Mongolian President and The Mongolian Government:
We, the siners of this petiton, ask for yiou to understand our worry about the most famous of Mongolian fish: the Mongolian Taimen, also referred to as The Monster.
The habitat of the Taimen is being destroyd by hube floating mines scooping up the riverbed and spitting out water and silt and making the river water murke long downstream.
The poaching of this magnificent beast of a fish is increasing, even the few fishing centers do not allow the fishermen to kill the Taimen, the "catch and release" fishing. The photo of this petition is an example of such a case.
The World Wildlife Fund is involved already in the protection and conservation of the Taimen country aling with the Taimen Conservation Fund, wich have limitede mans and just one permanent camp site on the Amur in Mongolia.
This huge Taimen is national treasure to Mongolia, just as the Shiba and Akita are to Japan. It is very important to reserve the river areas and even maybe stop the gold mining in the rivers habitiet by the Taimen to preserve it to the future generations. The Taimen has un-noticed tourist value and could provide the river area villages and local herdsmen a helthy income, but that is the dilemma: wich to choose. The sustainable choice of stopping the mining and letting the rivers stay in their present natural state, or to destroy the trivers and all the fish by mining for gold.
We hope that your decision would be favourable to the Taimen..
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