China is one of the most populous countries in the world with more than 1,412 million inhabitants, and only below India. This overpopulation and the lack of measures against emissions harmful to the environment caused Beijing to become a symbol of extreme pollution. Something that, according to some media, they have achieved reduce up to 98.3% in the last twelve years.
Precisely, within the framework of these anti-pollution measures, their efforts also focused on the Yangtze River, the largest in the country and on the Asian continent. This, after the process of city expansion in the 1950s, became the recipient of polluting liquids. At the same time, he began to receive more and more fishermen, causing overfishing.
Both factors, added to the construction of dams, caused the biodiversity of this great 6,300-kilometer river to decrease, some very important species becoming extinct such as the Chinese river dolphin or the Chinese paddlefish. The latter, declared extinct in 2022, was 150 years old. Something that generated concern in the government.
The government decided to ban commercial fishing in the river
It was then that they began to impose measures to reduce pollution levels, allocating $300 billion to try to recover the 135 species of fish that had disappeared from the river bed. However, it was not until commercial fishing was completely banned when they began to notice the results.
The ban was imposed on January 1, 2021 and is valid for ten years, both in the Yangtze River itself and in its different main tributaries and some lakes connected to its main channel, as explained by Live Science. A measure that meant the loss of work of 231,000 fishermen and the withdrawal of 111,000 vessels.
To avoid the detrimental effects that this could have on the economy of the fishermen’s families, some received a pension while others managed to find work in other sectors. 12,000 people were unemployed and in vulnerable situations, but were incorporated into temporary assistance programs, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China.
In 2025, 43 species will return to their natural habitat.
According to monitoring carried out between 2017 and 2021 on the fish population found in the riverbed, 135 species had disappeared. However, in 2025, just four years after the ban was established, 351 native species were registered, that is, 43 more than had been registered during the years prior to this.
According to figures presented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the river’s fish population doubled compared to previous years. Likewise, the results obtained in an independent study carried out by Science magazine showed that, thanks to the ban, 70 years of loss of the river’s biodiversity was stopped.
However, the measures not only entailed a complete ban on commercial fishing, but the plan known as the “Great Protection of the Yangtze River” also sought to improve overall water quality. Something that was achieved thanks to the control of contaminants and the elimination of sewage and wastewater, among other measures.