by Nikki Biskis and Barbara Wueringer
We are excited to announce that a long imagined SARA initiative is well underway! Since commencing our public submissions campaign in 2016, we have received over 140 sawfish saws in donation. Some of the saws are used for school visits and species ID workshops, but we are now on a mission to display the majority of saws all over Far North Queensland. This is our chance to turn saws once removed as trophies into messengers for conservation!
Right now we are designing and building informative displays to educate communities about how to safely release sawfish from fishing gear and report sightings to us. Our conversations with people from all walks of life have shown that once people understand how threatened sawfish are, they become stewards for these amazing animals. Ensuring that the saw is not amputated from an accidentally captured sawfish is one of our priorities.
So far we have received funding from the Advanced Queensland Citizen Science Initiative for the first 25 locations, with an ultimate goal of reaching 50. SARA has also received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the locations contacted so far. We have officially picked the first 20 locations, and most of them are already on board! Thank you to everyone that offered to be a part of our mission! If you think that your location (iconic pub, road house, tourist info centre and more) sees large numbers of both tourists and local visitors, and would like to join this project, please send an email to nikki(at)saw.fish
Both the Sawfish Biology Guide and Display Flyer were designed with this project in mind