KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF FISHERS ON FISHERIES RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN RUDRASAGAR LAKE, TRIPURA

Rudrasagar Lake is a lowland deep and extensive lake in Tripura. It is declared as National as well as an International Lake and is a Ramsar site. Presently, the lake is under threat of variety of human induced changes to its hydrology. The resource on which the livelihood of fishers depends, is in peril. Majority of fishers (67.85%) realized that the amount of fish in the lake is limited. Around 45.29 % of the respondents had positive attitude whereas 28.29 % had negative attitude and faith on the authority, community and government regulations on fishery resource management in lake. The attitude of consulting the government fisheries officials and applying government regulations was rather negative. The dispersed distribution of responses of the groups over the different answering categories, indicated that the results are sometimes slightly distorted by the social acceptability of the responses. Key words: Rudrasagar lake, fishers, knowledge, attitude, practices, fisheries, resource management.