Indawgyi Lake Fish Conservation Zones — Community Co-Managed Fisheries Protection (Myanmar)

Indawgyi Lake in Kachin State is Myanmar's largest lake and the second largest in Southeast Asia, a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance and the core of the Indawgyi Wildlife Sanctuary, home to nearly 100 bird species and the livelihood base for thousands of lakeside fishing families. The fishery has been declining under pressure from illegal electrofishing, widespread use of small-mesh gillnets, and runoff from nearby gold mining.
Fauna & Flora International (FFI) Myanmar, working with the specialist fisheries organisation FISHBIO, Friends of Wildlife, Myanmar's Fisheries Department and Indawgyi Wildlife Sanctuary staff, facilitated the establishment of nine Fish Conservation Zones (FCZs) around the lake. Zone boundaries combine scientific data on fish breeding habitat with local ecological knowledge, and some build on FCZs the Fisheries Department and Friends of Wildlife had already recognised. FISHBIO ran community meetings across 8 lakeside villages, trained local FFI staff to conduct fisher interviews and collect basic catch data, and helped set up collaborative lake patrols that enforce Myanmar's national fishing-season closures, minimum mesh-size rules and gear restrictions. The zones are co-managed jointly by fishing communities, the Fisheries Department and sanctuary staff.
Published accounts describe how the zones were designed and are patrolled, but do not yet report quantified catch-per-unit-effort or fish-population recovery figures, so the ecological evidence remains descriptive. Illegal electrofishing and mining-related runoff are both reported as continuing pressures, meaning the zones' long-term effectiveness has not been independently verified.

Read the full analysis: https://www.fauna-flora.org/projects/protecting-indawgyi-lake-myanmar/