Remodeling swamp fisheries: Conservation Area

Abstract

Indonesia is an archipelago country located in the equatorial and felt tropical weather throughout the year. Besides the strategic position, Indonesia also has large resources in land and sea territory. Indonesia has become one of the top countries with the largest biodiversity in the world. With two-thirds of the water area by the total territory of countries, Indonesia is rich with flora and fauna, including aquatic species in the sea and freshwater ecosystems. Freshwater and inland waters become essential habitats for human life, especially for rural people who live on the border of rivers. Indonesia's inland water consists of a large river basin that flows and forms a special habitat such as floodplain, lakes, oxbows, and reservoirs for the artificial habitat. The identical structure formed for each habitat based on its forming process and location made it potential for the growth of endemic fish populations and other species. Inland waters are land that is formed by flooded of water for a while or in stable condition. The flooded land has dynamic water and it flows or stays for a moment such as a river, reservoir, lake, swamp, floodplain, and other flooded areas. Indonesia has 54 million hectares of inland waters consisting of 0.05 million hectares of reservoirs, 1.8 million hectares of lakes, 12 million hectares of rivers and floodplains, and 39.5 million hectares covered by swamps (Kartamihardja et al., 2017). Besides the large potential of inland water in Indonesia, the statistic has recorded around 7,977 river basins, 1,144 main rivers, 312 large dams, 322 lakes, and more than 5,000 large flooded areas (Direktorat Sumberdaya Air, 2021). The inland waters are multipurpose areas with various human activities. Human life and needs cannot leave freshwater sources for daily consumption. It does not include the activities through the water bodies for transportation, settlement, recreation, and support for farming, planting, and mining (Kolding & Zwieten, 2014). Many kinds of activity remain pollutants and excess material. It makes the rise of risk and threatens fish resource lives that face environmental pressure and extinction. The change in the environmental quality of water, poisoning, pollutant accumulation, and unfriendly fishing activity were the main issues for developing sustainable fish resources (Welcomme et al., 2010). The utilization of inland water resources always involves many sectors and fishery will be a part that is impacted by the excess of all activities. The government of Indonesia has regulated the activities and utilization of inland water resources for the welfare of society to sustain them for the next generation. One of the regulations for fisheries management is Act Number. 31year 2004, which was amended by Act Number 45-year 2009. On the technical implementation, the Act regulation has been interpreted by The Marine Affairs and Fisheries Minister Decision (PermenKP) Number 29 year-2016, about the arrangement of planning for fishing and exploitation of inland waters resources. The regulation said the ways for a technical guideline for fishing and exploitation to optimize the resource utilization, continuity, and sustainability of inland fishery resources. Besides of two regulations, the Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries also decided the technical regulation on PermenKP Number 9 in the year 2020, that divided the inland water territory of Indonesia into 14 parts called “Wilayah Pengelolaan Perikanan Perairan Darat (WPP-PD)” (Figure 1). With this regulation, the government can manage the potential of fisheries resources based on the stock unit by the dominant ecosystem located in each area. The inland fishery has related to the geographic condition that varies and is identic by the topography of the land. This demarcation of the area also introduces the unit stock of fish resources that are exploited in each plain area. One of the potential areas with a large swamp in Indonesia is located in South Sumatra and it is placed in 438 WPP-PD areas. The 438 WPP-PD includes five provinces they are Lampung, South Sumatra, Jambi, Riau, and Bangka-Belitung. The 438 WPP-PD has a similarity of habitat typology dominated by large and long rivers that flows to the Java Sea on the east part (Husnah et al., 2019). These rivers give specific characteristics to the border sides with a wide area of the floodplain and peat land on the downstream and middle areas. The floodplain is characterized with low acidity water pH, shallow water, and low dissolved oxygen. It will dramatically change with water fluctuation and rainfall rate. The unique habitats are supposed to have the different characteristics of fish inside of this habitat. They can live with the high stress of low pH acidity and dissolved oxygen. The freshwater commodity also has high economic value for food and consumption for local people.