- Researchers have found that sacred waters protected by Indigenous traditions are crucial for fish conservation in Indonesia but remain excluded from national conservation frameworks.
- The study highlights how cultural practices have long preserved aquatic biodiversity, urging their integration into official conservation strategies.
- Experts call for deeper anthropological insight and recommend recognizing sacred sites through Indonesia’s Essential Ecosystem Areas to connect traditional and scientific conservation.
Researchers have recently found that sacred waters protected by Indigenous traditions are key to fish conservation in Indonesia, yet they remain largely unrecognized and excluded from national frameworks for biodiversity and cultural heritage preservation.
In Indonesia’s vast archipelagic region, where traditional practices often intersect with biodiversity conservation efforts, many bodies of water have been highly revered as inhabited by sacred spirits or deities, making them de facto protected areas for native fish species, according to a peer-reviewed study published in June in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. However, the paper’s researchers said the relevance of sacred natural sites for fish conservation has been overlooked by conservation authorities even though many customary practices were still being observed across the country.
“Our motivation for addressing this topic in a scientific article stems from the widespread lack of public awareness about aquatic environmental conservation,” Darmawan Setia Budi, aquaculture lecturer at Airlangga University who is the lead author of the paper, told Mongabay in an email.
“We observed that many people still pollute rivers and other water bodies, and engage in overfishing using environmentally harmful methods,” he added.
The study used a qualitative, ethnobiological review to examine the cultural role of sacred waters in Indonesian freshwater fish conservation, drawing on literature, community narratives, and case studies. The authors highlighted in the paper traditional practices’ relevance to modern ecological and community resilience efforts, grounding them in both academic and cultural perspectives.
For instance, the paper noted several sacred waters in West Java province’s Kuningan, such as Cibulan, Cigugur, Darma Loka, Linggarjati and Pasawahan, were home to the native fish species Neolissochillus soro, commonly known as mahseer. In East Java, sacred sites like Rambut Monte in Blitar are home to sengkaring, another mahseer species, and Gua Ngerong in Tuban harbors tawes (Barbonymus gonionotus), known as the silver barb, according to the paper.
The researchers said sacred waters act as vital spawning and nursery habitats for fish, protected from pollution, habitat degradation and overfishing, with consistently high water quality and stable ecological conditions. These environments provide ideal conditions for vulnerable fish larvae and juveniles, which are increasingly threatened in disturbed river systems, they found. By preserving these areas, Indigenous communities help sustain fish populations and aquatic ecosystems, demonstrating how traditional cultural practices can play a direct role in environmental conservation, they added.
“We found that sacred waters and the fish associated with them remain well-preserved, as people dare not disturb them,” Darmawan said in the email.
The study also described how local wisdom shaped marine conservation in Indonesia, where certain sea waters are regarded as sacred. The paper pointed to customary systems like sasi in Maluku and lubuk larangan in Sumatra, which protect fisheries through seasonal bans, no-take zones and ritual-based regulations.
Indonesia manages more than 36 million hectares (89 million acres) of protected areas under a legal framework that includes national parks, nature reserves and forest parks, with 54 national parks and 123 nature tourism parks among them. However, freshwater conservation remains limited within these categories, often restricted to larger parks and lacking targeted protection.
The study found that unlike state-managed areas, sacred waters protected by religious and cultural practices remain unmapped and absent from national conservation databases. While some sites are documented locally, their true number is likely far higher due to limited national-level recognition and inventory, the paper said.
“The role of sacred waters in freshwater fish conservation cannot be fully appreciated without understanding how these culturally protected areas relate to Indonesia’s formal environmental protection framework,” the authors wrote in the paper.
The study’s findings have contributed to the big picture of aquatic protection management in Indonesia by enriching the scientific knowledge pertaining to the so-called other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM), according to two experts Mongabay interviewed who are not involved in the paper.
Estradivari, a marine ecologist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, said the paper served as an important reminder that conservation was not a new concept in Indonesia, as communities have long had their own ways of protecting natural resources — including aquatic areas and fish — grounded in cultural values, spiritual beliefs and customary laws.
“In the national context, this enriches our understanding of conservation—showing that ecosystem protection stems not only from state policies or scientific approaches, but also from the living social practices of communities,” she said. “This is crucial for building a more inclusive and contextual conservation approach that does not disregard local values.”
Dedi Supriadi Adhuri, lead researcher at the Center for Research on Society and Culture at the National Research and Innovation Agency, called for a more anthropological approach be taken on the paper’s topic as such understanding was essential when discussing how these practices might be revitalized or adapted for sustainable and equitable conservation.
“Most of the publications come from authors with backgrounds in fisheries, coastal management or related fields, typically graduates of marine and fisheries faculties,” he said. “As a result, there is a lack of anthropological interpretation in studies on community-based or traditional knowledge-based resource management.”
“Without this anthropological perspective, such studies fall short in explaining the dynamics of traditional practices amid social and cultural changes within the community,” he added.
All of the experts agreed that formally recognizing and integrating sacred bodies of water within the country’s conservation measures would benefit both biodiversity and cultural heritage preservation.
The paper noted that one potential strategy for elevating the protection status of sacred waters is through Indonesia’s Essential Ecosystem Areas framework, a nonformal conservation designation introduced under the 2016 government regulation that recognizes culturally and ecologically significant areas outside formal reserves for their biodiversity value and managed collaboratively by local communities, religious institutions and government agencies. It also recommended mapping the distribution of sacred water sites across Indonesia and overlaying them with government-designated protected areas, revealing potential overlaps, complementary areas and conservation gaps.
“This approach could strengthen Indonesia’s national conservation framework by bridging customary and scientific conservation models, securing both ecological resilience and cultural continuity in freshwater ecosystems,” the paper said.
Basten Gokkon is a senior staff writer for Indonesia at Mongabay. Find him on 𝕏 @bgokkon.
See related:
OECM concept may bring more inclusive approach to conserving biodiversity
Citation:
Budi, D. S., Suciyono, Hasan, V., Priyadi, A., Permana, A., Ismi, S., Müller, T., Bodur, T., & South, J. (2025). The sacred waters and fish: Traditional practices and fish conservation in Indonesian communities. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, vol. 35, issue 6. doi:10.1002/aqc.70163
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