Save China’s finless porpois from the verge of extinction

Chinese scientists are in a battle to save one of the last large animal species living in the Yangtzi River – and complete restrictions on fishing in the region are helping them.

At the Hydrobiology Institute in Wuhan, from just 5 km (3.1 mi) from the banks of the river, now the protected bodies of extinct river dolphins (bye in sugar) and paddle fish sit quietly behind the glass pan.

“Now that they have become extinct, we are going to save the Porpois of the Yangtzi River,” Professor Wang Xi told the BBC. “It has become the most important animal here.”

It was in 2002 that the last known Baiji died, 22 years later, researchers at the institute started taking care of it. A year later, the final known paddle fish – a type of ray -fired fish that can grow to more than 3 meters – was accidentally caught by fishermen and disappeared despite the radio tag and release.

Now the target is to stop the Yangtz Finless River Porpois – 1,200 of which live in the wild, according to the current estimates – suffering from the same fate.

“It is the only top level hunter in the river,” says Professor Wang. “They are rare and their number reflects the health of the entire system ecology.”

The idea of the halt on all fishing was first conceived by Professor Cao Venxuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2006, but about five years ago, a lot of pressure was taken from fellow scientists before the entire 10-year-old kan-ban.

Implemented by the police, the restriction borces a potential gel time for those who are caught for fishing caught with Yangtzi as well as nearby lakes and tributaries. It is extremely disruptive, and has excluded 220,000 fishermen out of work.

Nevertheless, Finless Porpois, which belongs to the oldest living branch of Porpois Family Tree, is seriously in danger today.

Those BBCs were shown in the institute which are being held in captivity to be studied by CAS. They can be seen from the top or below, after taking the stairs down the stairs near a deep tank, where the observation area is located.

Scientists say that they get excited in the company of humans, and they definitely appear to be showing: running through the water and swimming at the speed, close to the glass with people on the other side. Swimming past, they see you with a mischievous smile.

In the wild, they are still hanging where other species cannot.

The construction of the main part of the Three Goraj Dam in 2006 did not directly affect Finless Porpois, which does not have to go upwards for spawn, although it affects the fish that they eat.

For other large marine animals, like paddle fish or sugar sturgeon, the structure was frightening.

Wang Ding, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), who specializes in CETACEANS such as Finless Porpois, has dedicated his life to preserve Yangtzi’s health. He can see good and bad with these dams – and remembers how things happened.

“Every flood season we have to organize a team with strong muscles, using many men, to sleep on the banks of the river, just in the event of a flood,” they say. “Then, if there is a flood, everyone would try his best to try to keep the levy banks solid, to ensure that they were not broken by dangerous running water.”

Now, they say, the three Goraj dams reduced against floods.

As Professor Wang explains, however, this giant, river-fierce structure also prevents the giant stars of Yangtzi from reaching their sponing grounds.

While the endangered fish seemed to be briefly finding an alternative location, they say, it is no longer the case – and these days the stars are only in the river because researchers are putting them in 10,000 at a time.

Despite the release of more than one lakh captive-bread stars in Yangtzi last year, the attempt to promote the population has failed, as the fish is not breeding himself in the wild.

So Finless Porpois does not end in this way, Professor Wang and other scientists are hoping that the current full fishing ban will continue after the initial 10 years.

His research published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences records a huge increase in the number of fish since the ban is implemented in 2021.

Another threat to finless porpois, however, can be difficult to resolve.

Wang Xi reported that “ships are very dangerous for the brain of animals because they are very noise”.

It is said to generate a form of underwater noise pollution that bothers animals.

Chinese scientists feel that sound from ships may have contributed to the death of Yangtzi’s Baiji River Dolphin, which used to communicate Sonar.

But this is one thing to ban fishing – it will be quite another to prevent busy river traffic completely that distributes passengers as well as goods, and also provides life for life for the Central China’s economy.

Forcing more obtainable factories that produce chemicals to move away from Yangtz. Thousands of these have been closed or shifted in the last decade, in a step that states that the quality of the river has improved significantly.

Porpoise conservation push has also led to community participation.

After retirement, Yang took amateur photography. Now, he says, he goes to the river with his camera equipment every day, trying to spot animals.

When he gets some good shots, he forwards them to scientists, who say that he is doing a better job than almost anyone who monitors his progress.

Mr. Yang says that he once saw a porpois in crisis that was caught in a trap. He informed the local authorities, who closed the section of the river for all shipping until it could be saved-and it was soon the exhaled porpois pregnant. He liked it very much, he says.

This is the porpois number, however, which tells the most solid story.

In the 1990s, there were 3,300 finless porpoes in the wild. By 2006 it was half.

Then there was a fishing restrictions, factories were transferred and the decline stopped. Not only this, but in the records of the last five years, the porpois number has increased by almost a quarter.

Scientists are proud of these numbers – and they are implications they keep more widely for environmental health.

“We are saving Finless Porpois to save the Yangtzi River,” Wang Ding. “It is like a great mirror, an idea that we are doing how well to protect this ecosystem.

“If porpos are fixing, if their number is increasing, it means that the ecological health of the entire river is also improving.”