Alifa Haque
- Project name: Sawfish in Bangladesh: Evidence-based conservation for reducing extinction risk
- Project site: Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh
- EDGE species: Largetooth sawfish Pristis pristis
- Active: 2019 - 2022
Biography
Alifa is a PhD candidate at Oxford University, where she also completed an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Management. She has been working in shark and ray conservation in Bangladesh for the last two and a half years. During this time she has worked hard to gain the trust of local fishers and traders, which she believes that the involvement of these stakeholders in conservation scenario and policy making is extremely important for elasmobranch conservation in Bangladesh.
Alifa wants to use the Fellowship to take on bigger goals for conservation in Bangladesh and to gain the leadership skills she needs to run effective projects in the future. She ultimately hopes to contribute towards a better conservation scenario for elasmobranchs in the Bay of Bengal region.
EDGE Project
Alifa’s project aims to provide rigorous information to managers on critical sawfish habitats and trade chains. She also aims to improve the reporting of incidental sawfish catches by developing a cell phone reporting system. Her objectives are to:
- Use the ecological knowledge of fishers to identify critical habitats for largetooth sawfish
- Develop a cell phone reporting system for sawfish (CPRSS)
- Pilot the reporting system in Sundarbans, Bay of Bengal
- Promote the reporting system to policymakers and coastal fishing villages
