Information ** on CCTV.
The greatness of the Yangtze River is not only what we Chinese ourselves say, China's mother river is also one of the seven rivers with the richest aquatic biodiversity in the world. According to official survey data, there are 424 species of fish in the Yangtze River, of which the number of endemic fish has even reached 183!
However, in the past few decades, the ecological function of the Yangtze River basin has been declining. The endemic species of the Yangtze River have rapidly declined to only more than 100 species, and various famous species, such as the Chinese sturgeon, the Yangtze finless porpoise, the Yangtze sturgeon, the white sturgeon, the white-sided dolphin and other rare species have all faced extinction, among which the white sturgeon has not been found since 03 years and has been determined to be extinct; The white-sided dolphin has also been declared functionally extinct, meaning that it has not completely disappeared, but has lost its ability to reproduce naturally.
How did it come to this? Development is too important for our country, so in the last century, under China's extensive economic development model, the Yangtze River was destroyed. Many fishermen were frantically trying their best to catch fish, and "poison, electricity, and nets" were also illegal fishing methods at that time, and even small fish would not be spared. As a result, the resources of the Yangtze River are rapidly decreasing, the ecology is getting worse and worse, and the fishermen are not making money the more they fish.
It is urgent to protect the Yangtze River! Since 2003, the Yangtze River basin has been closed to fishing for three to four months every year, but this time is not enough. Every time the fishing ban ends, the fishermen go even more crazy fishing, and the effect cannot be said to be nothing, but it is basically a drop in the bucket.
On June 28, 2020, Han Zheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China and Vice Premier of the Communist Party of China, attended a televised meeting in Beijing to promote the ban on fishing and the resettlement of fishermen who have returned to fishing in key waters of the Yangtze River basin and delivered a speech. At the meeting, arrangements were made for the ban on fishing in key waters of the Yangtze River basin and the resettlement of fishermen who have returned to fishing, and finally the measures of the 10-year fishing ban began to be implemented.
The results are remarkable! At the beginning of the 10-year ban, there were only 100 endemic species in the Yangtze River, but the number has increased significantly to 169, and the number of sightings of the Yangtze finless porpoise has increased, and the news of the rediscovery of various rare species continues to bring good news.
However, in the vigor of an article, there are still things to worry about.
During the summer of these two years, there are always people in the waters of the Three Gorges Dam to find a large number of silver carp and bighead carp gathered, the silver carp is fine, but the eel commonly known as the "water tiger" is a top predator that can reach hundreds of catties in size, so the people so many eels will destroy the Yangtze River to get some recovery ecology.
Eels are indeed fish worth paying attention to, and their graded predators in the Yangtze River basin can reach up to 2 meters in length and weigh up to 120 catties. As ferocious predator fish, they have a long pointed head, a wide mouth and a mouth full of sharp teeth, they eat 20% of their body weight a day, and they may go hunting whenever they encounter fish smaller than themselves. As long as the prey is caught up, it will inevitably die. They are sometimes attacked by their own kind, and there have even been cases of humans being attacked by them, so it is not an exaggeration to call them "water tigers".
Their survivability and reproduction ability are also top-notch, and after the ban on fishing in the Yangtze River began, they began to breed unbridled because they had almost no natural predators, so their numbers increased dramatically.
That's why the people who know about it will have the concerns mentioned above.
But there really isn't much to worry about, as a professional at the Fisheries Research Institute responded: predator fish like the eel will have an advantage when the stock increases. Because they have a lot of food, they are in a relatively top position, so they can reproduce in large numbers. But this advantage is short-term, the Yangtze River has a complete ecosystem, it is self-healing, and the eel, as a native species, cannot resist the natural balance.
And every year from May to July is the breeding period of eels, they are semi-migratory fish, in the breeding period will collectively from the downstream to the upstream area to find a spawning ground, so they will gather in large numbers, not the entire Yangtze River is covered with eels.
As long as it is a native species, in most cases it does not need to interfere with the self-healing of the natural environment. Moreover, although the eel is very ferocious, it will only be "presumptuous" in the depth of the water in which it lives, and other water depths will not be involved much, and when the fish resources of the Yangtze River are more stable, the number of eel will naturally increase or decrease to a suitable situation.
If the number of eel is really large enough to exceed the load of the Yangtze River basin for some reason, then the officials will definitely take action.
The ecological environment that has been seriously damaged such as the Yangtze River still cannot be completely restored by nature. Because various species are mutually contained, if a species lacks containment and reproduces in large numbers, it is still possible to cause ecological imbalance.
However, restoring the ecological balance of the Yangtze River is a difficult and long road, and whether to intervene manually and when to intervene can only be explored slowly.