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60 bags of river mussels seized

By Sobhapati Samom

IMPHAL, Jan 19 � Manipur police in association with wildlife activists have seized 60 bags of hard-shelled river mussel, popularly known as Kongreng, at Keithelmanbi in the outskirts of Imphal on Saturday. The mussels were brought by some traders from Cachar district in Assam.

The action was initiated by the police with the help of People For Animals (PFA) Manipur under the Biological Diversity Act.

Mussels are used as a delicacy in Manipur since time immemorial. Traders, mostly women, used to import mussels from neighbouring States to meet the increasing demands of the public here. A bag of mussels cost about Rs 600 to Rs 700 in the Imphal market. The market value of the recovered mussel would be around Rs 35,000-Rs 40,000.

Sources said thousands of mussels are reportedly caught daily from Icha river of Cachar. �This practice will definitely adversely affect the environment,� says L Biswajeet Meitei of PFA Manipur. �The mussel is listed under red list of threatened species of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature)�, he added.

Environmentalists have been demanding a halt to indiscriminate harvesting from natural sources and mass trading of mussel . �For consumption purpose we could breed mussel in farms like those in Southeast Asian countries�, he said. The mussels carry out a major task of cleaning water bodies such as rivers as it helps the automatic filtering of the water.

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