Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Swimming With The FISH - Tagal System




In Sabah it is known as "Tagal System" borrowing the word "Tagal" from the native language. Actually it is a community-based fisheries resource management system. It has gaining the minds and hearts of many riparian communities in Sabah. The Tagal System is a stakeholder-driven system of rehablitation, protection, and conservation of the river environments and the fisheries resouces for its sustainable development. At the moment, the number of Tagal areas established in Sabah has multiplied to 212 involving 107 rivers in eleven districts.

Protection of the environment of the Tagal System rivers and its enforcement are in the hands of the elected Tagal Committees. At present the enforcement of the prohibitions is through the imposition of native customary laws that are backed by the Native Court.
And then, Sarawak borrowed the same system and it called "Tagang System". In the Iban language "Tagang" is refers to control and conserve. It aim is to raise awareness of conservation and local community commitments towards increasing fish production for food as well as promoting agro-tourisme. Apart from that, it also create responsible manner to prevent, control and reduce river pollution to preserve natural environment for the future generation.
There are 23 Tagang System areas in Sarawak.
* The above photos was taken by myslef during my visit to one of the village that run their Tagal System in Sabah. It was a lots of small fishes in the river after a few month they launch their Tagal System.

2 comments:

rainfield61 said...

Whenever we can swim in the river, it is still well protected.

Many rivers in Peninsular Malaysia are very bad polluted.

Rick (Ratty) said...

It looks like the system is working very well where they use it. Hopefully other places will use the same too. Where I live we are surrounded by water too. There isn't a big concern with conservation yet, because in the upper parts of our state the human population is small. Where I live there are more people, but we also have one of the biggest fresh water supplies in the world.