งานวิจัยและบทความ

Thailand's Mun River is the most important tributary of the Mekong River. The new Pak Mun Dam, just 5 km upstream from the mouth of the Mun into the Mekong mainstream, has profound ecological implications for the ecology of the Mekong River as well as the entire Mun drainage.

Baseline data on fishes and fish ecology of the Mekong basin, including the Mun River and its tributaries such as the Chee, are totally inadequate. Previous environmental impact analyses of Pak Mun underestimate or ignore major negative impacts on fish. The fish ladder to be installed on Pak Mun Dam may be the best design available, but the very rich and highly diverse megapotamic fish fauna of the Mun River cannot possibly be sustained by means of a fish ladder and fisheries stocking programs, no matter how much manpower and money are expended on them. Pak Mun Dam predictably will have significant negative impacts on the ecology and fisheries of the Middle and Lower Mekong basin, not just the Mun River and its tributaries. Pollution from riverside industrialization at Ubol Ratchathani, the mouth of the Mun River, and on the Mekong mainstream based on Pak Mun hydropower will pose direct threats to the mainstream Mekong fisheries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.