INDIA: Trout Survives Kashmir’s Hostile Environment

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rahul Bedi

DACHIGAM, India, Mar 1 2004 (IPS) - Shipped out from Scotland to north India’s Himalayas over a century ago, Kashmir’s trout has survived several wars, a 15-year long armed rebellion and is now ready to be exported back to Europe.

"After making good the local demand, we will soon be in a position to send surplus stocks overseas,” said Jaipal Singh Bali of the state’s fisheries department. The department runs 30 hatcheries that annually produce around 100 metric tonnes of delicately flavoured Rainbow and Brown trout.

He claims that Kashmiri trout, introduced into the region by the British in 1900, is among the world’s healthiest and tastiest because it lives in oxygen-rich, snow-fed streams. As proof, the official declared that the survival rate of trout eggs in Kashmir is around 10 percent higher than the Western average of around 46 percent.

"It (Kashmiri trout) has none of the sponginess found in trout from polluted streams and industrial breeding pools in the West,” assistant fisheries director Manzoor Ahmad proudly declared here at Kashmir’s oldest Dachigam hatchery.

The hatchery is 32.2 kilometres south of the state’s summer capital Srinagar, which has barely endured the insurgency that has claimed over 65,000 lives since 1989.

Nestled at the base of the snowcapped Pir Panjal mountains in thick forest populated by bears and the Hangul, or the fast disappearing Kashmiri deer, the Dachigam hatchery was seized by insurgents fighting for an Islamic homeland for nearly seven years till 1996.

After sporadic but fierce firefights, the insurgents were eventually dislodged from the hatchery by the paramilitary, who then moved into its picturesque complex, doted with log cabins beside the gurgling Dachigam stream, for another two years. Like its earlier occupants, they too began dipping into the trout breeding ponds for their content.

"To our surprise and relief, the trout proved hardier than we anticipated,” Ahmed said. ”But it took over a year for the ravaged campus to be repaired and for the breeding programme to come on-line again,” he added.

Financial aid from the European Union, including the gift of a Dutch feed mill, pushed local trout output to over 100 metric tonnes. The expected arrival of four additional French feed-mills would significantly enhance trout production making exports a reality, officials said.

But officials said several irritants blocked the way before trout exports could begin. There was no international airport in Indian-administered Kashmir, while the hatcheries were plagued by power shortages and insufficient investment. Corruption and overall lethargy and inefficiency were the other problems Kashmir’s trout industry faced.

At the British Residents’ instance, the first consignment of 10,000 trout eggs was sent by the Duke of Bedford to Kashmir’s Maharaja in 1899, but perished en route.

A few months later, in December 1900, a new batch from Scotland arrived in excellent condition and was reared by the Resident’s close friend, Frank J Mitchel, at his carpet factory in Srinagar and at Dachigam before being introduced into the nearby fast-flowing mountain streams.

But of the five original species of trout, only the Rainbow and Brown varieties adapted to Kashmir’s rivers, where temperatures fluctuate between 4 and 24 degrees Celsius.

Mitchel, known in local guidebooks as the ‘Father of Kashmir Trout’, also formed the state’s fishing club with 12 fellow Briton anglers. But due to complications involving the state ownership of Kashmir’s rivers, the club was forced to disband.

Kashmir seriously began cultivating trout in large numbers only in the mid-1980s and the fisheries department started marketing it over a decade later. Today, a pound of trout sells at a little over 1.50 U.S. dollars..

Posters at the city’s weekly fish market extol the virtues of trout – "Eating trout cuts risks of heart attack. It good for human brain," one poster explains. You can stay trim with trout and still enjoy a healthy meal, it declares. "By promoting trout we have made inroads into the diet of Kashmiris who are mainly red-meat eaters, Asfia Alvi, a senior fisheries project officer, said.

The authorities also try and attract anglers to Kashmir’s 100-odd fishing beats by regularly stocking the streams with trout that weigh an average of four kilogrammes, while some as heavy as 8.1 kg have also been landed.

But the insurgency has discouraged many from taking up the challenge, although around 1,000 anglers, including some 100 Western enthusiasts, did visit Kashmir last year to fish trout.

Besides the Kashmir Valley, trout had also been successfully introduced recently in the southern Jammu plains.

Kashmir’s success with trout breeding has also lured three other Indian hill states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in the north and Sikkim in the north-east to seek its assistance.