Social Barriers to a Fish Habitat Conservation Project in Turkey

Conserving critical habitats and maintaining traditional harmony between humans and wildlife in working landscapes of less developed regions is an ongoing challenge. Deeply embedded customs and strict belief systems of... [ view full abstract ]

Conserving critical habitats and maintaining traditional harmony between humans and wildlife in working landscapes of less developed regions is an ongoing challenge. Deeply embedded customs and strict belief systems of traditional societies often constitute serious barriers for conservation efforts. And when such efforts attempt to introduce innovative instruments or suggest new methods of practice the resistance is even greater.

A habitat conservation project was developed in a sensitive aquatic habitat of a typical Mediterranean working landscape in the Köprülü Kanyon National Park in South Turkey. The essence of the project was to collaborate with locals to irrigate responsibly by preventing fish par from swimming into dead-end irrigation channels during their reproduction cycle.

The project consisted of two dimensions: one being physical - implementation of an innovative fish filtering device to prevent fish par from swimming into the agricultural trenches, and the second a social dimension - collaborating with the local people who acquire irrigation water from the aquatic habitat. The project was successfully implemented and operated for a couple of years in its physical dimension. Although the social dimension seemed to be satisfactory at the initiation of the project it eventually failed due to the eminent sociocultural barriers of a closed society. The project lost its local support and failed entirely due to: a) the strict Islamic life style that prevented the project from involving the women of the village; b) locals were wary because of earlier top down management issues between the National Park; c) they had lost their trust in outsiders in general since they did not believe anyone would do anything good for them for free.

This project is a good case to demonstrate that bio-physical solutions are in vain without strong support of social and cultural foundation. Although the project is being further developed on its physical aspects’ the next phase is heavily concentrated on collaborating with the local communities first.