Saving China’s finless porpoise from the brink of extinction

Chinese scientists are in a battle to save one of the last types of large animals that live in the Yangste River – and a complete ban on hunting in the region helps them.

At the Hydrobic Institute in Wuhan, just 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of the banks of the river, the preserved bodies in Dolphin are now engraved (Payge in Chinese) and rowing fish silently behind glass panels.

Professor Wang Xi tells the BBC: “Now that they have become extinct, we will provide the yangste river pigs,” Professor Wang Xi told the BBC. “It has become a most important animal here.”

In 2002, the well -known Bigi, 22, died 22 years after researchers began at the institute. A year later, the last well -known muffled fish – a type of fish that can grow to more than 3 meters – accidentally arrested by fishermen, and although the radio was marked and released.

The goal now is to stop the indiscriminate yangste river pigs – 1200 of which remain in the wilderness, according to current estimates – from suffering from the same fate.

“He is the only predator remaining in the river,” said Professor Wang. “It is rare and its numbers reflect the health of the environment in the entire system.”

The idea of ​​stopping all fish hunting for the first time was imagined by Professor Cao Wenxuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2006, but it took more pressure from his fellow scientists before the appearance of a full basin for 10 years nearly five years ago.

It is imposed by the ban by the police, the embargo carries a possible time to imprisonment for those who hunting hunting along the yangste, as well as the neighboring lakes and tributaries. It was very annoying, and put 220,000 fishermen.

However, swine -free pigs, which belong to the oldest living branch of the pig family tree, are still threatened with extinction today.

Those who were displayed on the British Broadcasting Authority at the Institute have been shown in the captivity for their study by Cas. It can be seen from above the water or below, after taking the stairs to the side of a deep tank where the monitoring area is located.

Scientists say they are enthusiastic with humans, and they seem to appear: the race through water and swimming quickly, near glass with people on the other side. Swimming in the past, they seem to look at you with a harmful smile.

In the wild, they are still hanging on the place where other types could not.

The construction of the main part of the Three Gorges DAM in 2006 did not directly affect the incomparable pigs, which they do not have to go to the top to spark, although they affect the fish they eat.

For other large marine animals, such as attractive fish or Chinese pipe, the structure was catastrophic.

Wang Ding, a member of the International Federation for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a specialist in jailer -free pigs, has devoted his life to preserving the health of Yangti. He can see good and bad with these dams – and remember how things were.

He says: “Every flood season we had to organize a team with strong muscles, using many men, to sleep on the bank of the river, only in the event of a flood.” “Then, if the flood is hit, everyone will do their best to try to keep the tax tax, to ensure that it is not broken due to the dangerous accelerating water.”

Now, he says, relieves the three fear dam against floods.

As Professor Wang also indicates, this huge structure that prevents rivers also prevents giant giant thickness in Yangtze from reaching spawning lands.

Although endangered fish seemed to find an alternative location, this is no longer the case – and these days are Surgon in the river only because researchers flow on them, 10,000 at one time.

Despite the release of more than a million captive fish from the prisoner in the Yangste last year, the attempts to strengthen the population did not succeed, because the fish do not multiply on their own in the wild.

So the endless pigs such as this, and Professor Wang and other scientists hope that the current fully fishing ban will continue after the end of the ten initial years.

Their research, published in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has recorded a radical increase in the numbers of fish since the embargo came into effect in 2021.

Another threat to non -dark pigs, however, it may be difficult to solve.

“The ships are very dangerous for animal brains because they are very noisy.”

It is said that this produces a form of underwater noise pollution that disturbs animals.

Chinese scientists believe that the sound of ships may have contributed to the disappearance of the dolphins in the Bigi River in Yangti, which used the sonar to communicate.

But one of the things that prohibits fishing – it will be completely another to stop the movement of the fully crowded river that provides passengers and goods, and provides a lifeline in most of the Chinese Central economy.

It was more possible forcing factories that produce chemicals to stay away from the yangste. Thousands of these things have been closed or transferred over the past decade, in a move that is said to have improved greatly from the quality of the river water.

There was also the participation of society in the boost of preserving pigs.

After retirement, Yang took over the amateur. Now, he says, he goes to the river every day with his camera equipment tries to detect animals.

When he gets some good shots, they are redirected to scientists, who say he is doing a better job than almost any person who follows his progress.

Mr. Yang says he once saw pigs in an ordeal arrested in some netting. He informed the local authorities, which closed this section from the river to all shipping so that it could be saved-and it is clear that the pigs that will be released soon were pregnant. He was satisfied with that, he says.

However, it is the pig numbers that tell the most convincing story.

In the nineties, there were 3,300 pigs without fins in the wild. By 2006, this decreased in half.

Then the fishing ban came, the factories were transported and the decline stopped. Not only that, but over the past five years of records, pigs numbers have increased by about a quarter of.

Scientists are proud of these numbers – and the effects of environmental health on a larger scale.

“We save the fins -free pigs to save the Yangste River,” says Wang Ding. “This is like a great mirror, to get an idea of ​​how much we protect this ecosystem.

“If the pigs are working well, if their numbers are increasing, then this means that the environmental health of the entire river is also improving.”