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“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

—E. B. White

OUR SUPPORTERS

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Chimed-Ochir Bazarsad

Chimed-Ochir is the former director of WWF Mongolia. He has more than 25 years of experience in nature conservation, including transboundary work in Russia and China.

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Darron Collins

Darron is the president of the College of the Atlantic. During his time at the World Wildlife Fund, he worked for nearly a decade on river conservation in Mongolia and the Russian Far East.

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Matthew McKinney

Matt is director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at The University of Montana. During the past two decades, he has worked with diverse groups of people to design and facilitate transboundary conservation initiatives and published research on international water law, policy, and governance.

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Peter W. Fong

Peter is a writer, photographer, and flyfishing guide whose work has appeared in Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod & Reel, Gray's Sporting Journal, the New York Times, and many other publications. He has been the head guide at Mongolia River Outfitters for more than a decade.

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Sabra Purdy

Sabra Purdy studies the impact of long-term grazing practices on native fish habitat. She is a former whitewater guide and a veteran of the Nobody’s River Project (nobodysriver.org), an all-female expedition from the headwaters of the Amur River to the Sea of Okhotsk.

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Lanie Galland

Lanie is a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her conference presentation, “Genotyping by sequencing and analyses of geographic genetic structure to guide conservation of the world’s largest salmonid: Hucho taimen,” was delivered at a 2017 American Fisheries Society special symposium.

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Mikhail Skopets

Mikhail is the author of more than 80 scientific papers and the discoverer of several species of fish, including Salvethymus svetovidovi, the long-finned char. After 30 years at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Biological Problems of the North, he now works as an independent researcher and flyfishing guide.

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Guido Rahr

An artist and avid flyfisherman, Guido has collected data on both taimen and invertebrates in the rivers of eastern Russia. He is currently a senior at Lincoln High school in Portland, Oregon, and will attend the  University of Vermont.  

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Rebecca Waters

Rebecca is the executive director of the Wolverine Foundation and the director of the Mongolian Wolverine Project. A graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a former Peace Corps volunteer, she has worked on environmental issues in Mongolia for 17 years.

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Expedition Members

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Chimed-Ochir Bazarsad

Chimed-Ochir is the former director of WWF Mongolia. He has more than 25 years of experience in nature conservation, including transboundary work in Russia and China.

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Darron Collins

Darron is the president of the College of the Atlantic. During his time at the World Wildlife Fund, he worked for nearly a decade on river conservation in Mongolia and the Russian Far East.

with oar.jpg

Peter W. Fong

Peter is a writer, photographer, and flyfishing guide whose work has appeared in Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod & Reel, Gray's Sporting Journal, the New York Times, and many other publications. He has been the head guide at Mongolia River Outfitters for more than a decade.

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Jeff Forsee

Lanie Galland

Charlie Conn

Lanie is a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her conference presentation, “Genotyping by sequencing and analyses of geographic genetic structure to guide conservation of the world’s largest salmonid: Hucho taimen,” was delivered at a 2017 American Fisheries Society special symposium.

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Matthew McKinney

Matt is director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at The University of Montana. During the past two decades, he has worked with diverse groups of people to design and facilitate transboundary conservation initiatives and published research on international water law, policy, and governance.

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Mark Portman

Mark earned a master's degree in marine affairs and policy from the University of Miami. He has worked with a diverse array of fish species—from cobia to pompano to tilapia—and is Fish Mongolia’s resident Instagrammer.

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Sabra Purdy

Sabra Purdy studies the impact of long-term grazing practices on native fish habitat. She is a former whitewater guide and a veteran of the Nobody’s River Project (nobodysriver.org), an all-female expedition from the headwaters of the Amur River to the Sea of Okhotsk.

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Guido Rahr

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Rebecca Waters

Rebecca is the executive director of the Wolverine Foundation and the director of the Mongolian Wolverine Project. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she has worked on environmental issues in Mongolia for 17 years.

An artist and avid flyfisherman, Guido has collected data on both taimen and invertebrates in the rivers of eastern Russia. He is currently a senior at Lincoln High school in Portland, Oregon, and will attend the  University of Vermont.  

Mikhail Skopets

Mikhail is the author of more than 80 scientific papers and the discoverer of several species of fish, including Salvethymus svetovidovi, the long-finned char. After 30 years at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Biological Problems of the North, he now works as an independent researcher and flyfishing guide.

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Jeff is the head guide at Fish Mongolia and a resident of New Zealand.

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Jeff is the head guide at Fish Mongolia and a resident of New Zealand.

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Charlie started guiding in Mongolia in 1998 for Hovsgol / Sweetwater Travel and has been returning there ever since. In 2010, Charlie was a driving force behind the creation of the Taimen Fund for the Tributary Fund. When the Taimen Fund established itself as a separate nonprofit organization in 2013, he became its first executive director.

News & Views

Baikal Without Boundaries

October 11, 2013

This video, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, Global Environment Facility, United Nations Office for Project Services, and Atlas of Culture, deserves a look. If you're pressed for time, the portion from 4:20 to 6:47 focuses specifically on the Selenge basin.

Baikal Blues

September 14, 2016

This documentary by Russia's RT network describes the threats to "Russia’s greatest national treasure."

"The World's Largest Lake Takes On The World Bank"

April 7, 2017

Coverage of the Selenge basin dam projects in Forbes magazine.

September 2016

Hands Across Borders

This workshop, organized by team member Matt McKinney and others at the University of Montana's Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, gathered participants representing 28 different transboundary conservation initiatives across 70 countries.

Are "energy companies the masters" of the Selenge?

October 19, 2017

Coverage of activists' efforts—on both sides of the border—by Radio Free Europe.

Planning an International Renewable Power Grid

June 28, 2018

Will a multi-nation power grid in Northeast Asia decrease or increase threats to the river? Short answer: it depends.

A Cautionary Tale?

December 24, 2018

The headline for this New York Times story by Nicholas Casey and Clifford Krauss is blunt: "It Doesn’t Matter if Ecuador Can Afford This Dam. China Still Gets Paid." The parallels between Ecuador and Mongolia may not be exact, but the implications for the Selenge are definitely not pretty.

“What a fine book! There are few more beautiful places on earth than Lake Baikal  and its vast surroundings; this account of a noble adventure will leave you with deep  impressions of the place and its people, its past and its possible futures. Surely a fifth of the earth's fresh water deserves your attention!”

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and founder of  Third Act

Rowing to Baikal is an instant classic in the disturbing genre created by people in love with massive ecosystems in the process of being destroyed. Peter Fong’s portrait of the rivers that carry a fifth of Earth’s freshwater to Lake Baikal is both panoramic and intensely personal, stretching from the political nightmares that threaten Baikal to love for the tiny pikas (‘Little Kings,’ Peter calls them) that still perch on boulders in the headwaters surveying the beauty and heartache far below. Eighty percent of the world’s rivers are now dammed at stupendous cost to ecological and cultural health. That more dams within a year may decimate this planetary treasure stands in maddening contrast to Peter's courageous account of his voyage. I love this book, and pray health to its waters.”

David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and Sun House

Rowing to Baikal is an engrossing tale told by the intrepid Peter Fong, whose vivid prose carries readers to the farthest ends of the earth, and expands our sense of discovery, responsibility, and interconnectedness—our ken, as it were—as all good stories should.”

Chris Dombrowski, author of The River You Touch

“In Rowing to Baikal, Peter Fong has written a graceful and illuminating account of the Baikal Headwaters Expedition. Fong leads a captivating cast of characters in a search for solutions to the entangled dilemmas of river conservation and energy independence for Mongolia, weaving together ecological observations and a passionate voice for the river’s future.”

Nancy Langston, author of Climate Ghosts and Sustaining Lake Superior

Rowing to Baikal is a magical story of a scientific expedition through the Selenge River watershed. Peter Fong has picked up the pen from the likes of Peter Matthiessen and Carl Safina. This treasure is a travel narrative, conservation account, and an environmental justice treatise all wrapped into a perfectly paced adventure with kayaks, shamans, vodka, and always, swimming just ahead, the elusive Baikal omul and the Mongolian taimen: two rare fish with climate change and geopolitics nipping at their tails.”

Richard J. King, author of Ahab’s Rolling Sea and The Devil’s Cormorant

 

“Both a rollicking yarn and a moving portrait of a complex, remote place, Rowing to Baikal goes up mountains and down the Selenge River to show us the politics, significance, and beauty of the Mongolian-Russian borderlands. Full of camels, rare fish, and unforgettable people, Fong makes you care for this river and the cultures it nurtures.”

Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast

Order your copy now!

Fifty percent of the royalties from your purchase will be donated to

the Wild Salmon Center's International Taimen Initiative.

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