The Taimen Conservation Project – Notes from the Field January 27, 2012

This series follows University of Montana graduate student Dan Bailey as he travels the wilds of Mongolia to survey and tag Taimen, the world’s largest trout. From the team’s remote field camp and elsewhere across the world, Dan is posting to the Club EcoBlu blog as he assists with the Taimen Conservation Project . Taimen are highly endangered, have been known to grow to 6-ft long and more than 200 lbs. The information gathered will aid in drafting a conservation plan to protect this megafish. Trout Headwaters, Inc. is a sponsor of the project.

Notes from the Field January 27, 2012

I would like to thank Dr. Pete Rand and the Wild Salmon Center for organizing and facilitating the comprehensive taimen conservation workshop held during the December, 2011 Society of Conservation Annual Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand. It was truly fascinating listening to the state of the taimen from all over the world. Conservationists and researchers from Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Austria, Mongolia and America all shared their taimen work and conservation ideas. We focused primarily on the sea run taimen (Sakhalintaimen) and also Siberian taimen. One of the major reasons for this conference was to determine the IUCN red list status of the five taimen species. Unfortunately, with the exception of the Siberian taimen, there was not much argument as to the state of taimen across the globe. The Danube, Sichuan, Korean and Sakhalin taimen have all been labeled critically endangered by the IUCN. Further work will be conducted over the next few months to determine the status of the Siberian taimen. Because of its large historic range and relatively healthy populations in some areas, the status of the Siberian taimen is still in question. Key research gaps from areas of central and western Russia need to be examined in order to make this decision.