The indigenous Garo tribal community in Meghalaya has found a unique way of protecting its native fish species in the flowing hill streams. They had sound knowledge about the fish breeding season, their migration pattern towards upstream, and the need for their protection.

Kuruwa is a riparian village on the south-western flanks of Darrang,  a substantive area and terrain in northern-bank of middle Assam. Its riparian location puts it on the peripheries of the district administrative jurisdiction, with the Brahmaputra River and its sediment-laden deposits i.e. the chapori being its immediate neighbours.

Recurring floods and erosion are the regular annual visitors to the flood plains of upper Assam across. But despite the vagaries of the Subansiri and Ranganadi rivers, the flood-hit families return to their risky but familiar environs, and try to rebuild lives with renewed vigour.

Paul Andy Kharkhongor takes a stroll along the memory lanes of Nongrim Hills, a locality he grew up in. The memories of several elders, besides his own, revolve mostly around their childhood experiences of collecting water from a popular source of spring water, known as Ka Per Moina. 

The ecological history of the Chaibari village and the river Kaldiya has largely been shaped by intimate relations between the river and the communities settled along its banks. Both had influence on each other, at times friendly, at other times, adversarial; it was a connector as well as a divider.

The Dumboor Lake has now been designated as a tourist and resort destination. Transformed into the Coconut Island or Narkel Kunja. The reason for the name ‘Coconut’ is that, prior to the construction of the dam, some tribal people had planted coconut trees on that specific piece of land.

Linda Chhakchhuak talks here about one of the extraordinary collective actions to protect the migratory indigenous fishes. Very few perhaps know that there are such locations in Mizoram where the exciting scene of upstream movement of many native egg-bearing fish species can be witnessed by the human eye.