GEF Mongolia Egin-Uur Watershed Conservation Initiative

completed

The American flyfishing company, Sweetwater Travel and its Mongolian parner, Hovsgol Travel, have been operating a successful flyfishing ecotourism business on the Eg and Uur rivers since 1995. The two companies established an NGO, the Taimen Conservation Fund (TCF), to assist the local communities manage the EUWA natural resources.The project aims to establish a partnership between the local communities, government institutions and bodies, and tourist companies to collaboratively and proactively establish a natural resource management regime for the Eg-Uur Watershed Area (EUWA) in the north-western region of Mongolia. The underlying rationale of the project is to treat wildlife as a locally managed concessionable natural resource, rather than a simple public good, thereby enabling the local communities to maximize the economic returns from its use. The financial sustainability and biodiversity conservation vehicle for the project is high-end, low impact catch and release flyfishing ecotourism. The project promotes poverty reduction by supporting community based initiatives in sustainable land and resource use. The GEF intervention provides the conditions to initiate a natural resource user fee system, which will tap into these returns to fund biodiversity conservation and community development on a financially sustainable basis.