The decades-long ecological decline of China’s Yangtze River appears to have been halted by the introduction of a sweeping ten-year ban on commercial fishing across the entire river basin. According to measurements by Chinese hydrobiologists, threatened fish species are recovering, fish biomass has more than doubled, and species richness has increased by 13 per cent (Science, 13 February).
The Yangtze River – China’s largest and longest river – has suffered severe biodiversity loss for seventy years as a result of overfishing and habitat degradation. In 2021, China therefore introduced an unprecedented ten-year fishing ban covering the entire Yangtze basin, combined with strict enforcement and environmental monitoring.
Researchers led by the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan have now evaluated the results of these measures by comparing fish stock data from before (2018) and after the ban (2023), examining metrics such as fish biomass, condition, species richness, and the presence of threatened species. This reveals that the river is showing early signs of ecological recovery; larger fish species in particular, and those high in the food web, are more abundant and in better condition than before. The sixteen large fish species (maximum body length greater than 20 centimetres) show a median biomass increase of 232 per cent, whilst the biomass of four smaller species actually declined by 18 per cent. Also encouraging are the first signs of recovery for migratory and threatened species, such as the Cynoglossus gracilis, whose migration into freshwater extended further upstream.