In the Kashmir valley, older fishers still describe a time when snow trout (Kaeshir Gaad in Kashmiri) filled the Jhelum and its tributaries so reliably that an hour on the water was enough to feed a family. That time is gone. Across the valley, fishers now report catch declines of up to 60%, and Schizothorax populations have disappeared entirely from stretches of river they once dominated. When a species collapses this visibly, the policy instinct is predictable: list it, and ban the fishing. It is the response that looks proportionate to the emergency. In Kashmir’s case, it may also be the wrong one. 

The evidence does not point to fishing, still less to organized trade, as the primary driver of decline. Snow trout need cold, clear, fast-flowing water and clean gravel beds to spawn. What is destroying that habitat is riverbed and boulder mining, dam and barrage construction that fragments migratory routes, and sewage and agricultural runoff choking the rivers with nutrients. Unlike ivory or pangolin scales, there is no documented high-value black market moving snow trout across........

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