Contact: Bob Ratliff
Two Mississippi State professors are helping shape management policies for dams straddling many of the world's rivers.
Donald C. Jackson and Leandro E.S. Miranda of the university's department of wildlife and fisheries recently completed reports for the World Commission on Dams, an agency of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. Each prepared separate reports addressing influences of dams and reservoirs on river fisheries.
"The two reports will serve as guiding documents internationally as decisions are made about current and future dams, whether to build them, maintain them or tear them down," Jackson said.
The MSU team was recruited for the assignment by an FAO official who heard them give presentations at a 1999 international conference in Poland. Having spent the past year gathering data and compiling their studies, both men agree the information in their reports should enable waterway policy makers to make better informed decisions.
"In many parts of the world, inland fisheries are a principal source of protein for human populations," Miranda explained. "The dependence on the water and food that come from rivers and reservoirs make them vital for human survival, and mistakes in their management can lead to disaster."
Miranda, who has worked extensively with North and Latin American freshwater fisheries, investigated the management of reservoirs and rivers to benefit fish and fisheries.
In addition to experience with Alaskan and other U.S. fisheries, Jackson has worked on projects in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. His report specifically addresses the influence of dams on river fisheries.
"Dams have had a serious negative impact in some areas, but there also have been valuable fisheries created by dams as a result of the upstream reservoirs and the tailwater environments immediately below the dams," he said.
As an example, Jackson cited the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in Mississippi and Alabama.
"The historical river fisheries of the Tombigbee River have been essentially replaced by highly productive but artificial fisheries," he observed. "The natural river and its associated fisheries were lost, but fisheries benefits certainly have accrued."
Because of his U.N. assignment, Jackson has been asked to join the American Fisheries Society's task force on dams in the United States.
"The U.N. project and this request by the American Fisheries Society are both indications of the national and international respect MSU's Forest and Wildlife Research Center has earned," he said.