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BEIJING: In Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, a ceremony to launch the fishing ban was held in key waters of the Yangtze River.
Under the central government’s plan, a full 10-year fishing ban is now enforced in the core waters of the Yangtze, China’s longest river, starting Friday.
Ma Xinglin, a 49-year-old former fisherman in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, has witnessed a massive change in the lives of fishermen along the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze.
“In the 1980s, you could easily catch 10 kg of fish with a fishing net on a sandbar. But around 2000, it was difficult to make a living fishing with fewer fish in the river, ”Ma said.
For decades, urbanization and shipping along the Yangtze River have led to the reduction or disappearance of aquatic habitats.
Agricultural fertilizers and pesticides have also led to river pollution, said Wei Qiwei, a researcher at the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Fisheries Sciences.
In recent years, the provincial-level regions along the river have intensified their efforts to protect the “mother river” of the Chinese nation.
In 2019, Jiangxi Province, located in the middle of the river, established its first interregional environmental resources court in the Poyang Lake National Reserve. It is the largest freshwater lake in the country in the Yangtze River basin.
“We found that the number of Coilia nasus in the lake has multiplied compared to the previous year in 2020,” said Gao Xiaoping, deputy director of the Jiujiang City Aquatic Science Research Institute in Jiangxi.
Hunan Province, also located in the middle stretch of the river, has closed and dismantled the 39 illegal piers along the main stream of the Yangtze River while restoring the ecological environment there. The province has also planted more than 1,300 hectares of forest along the river.
In 2019, the average concentration of total phosphorus in the area of Dongting Lake, China’s second-largest freshwater lake in the river basin, dropped by 41 percent compared to 2015.
With the improvement in water quality, the lake also saw more than 246,000 winter waterfowl in the year. It is the highest number in the last 10 years.
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