Yangtze Developers Quietly Remove Key Protections From Last Wild Area - Vital Biodiversity Will Go

[hatrack]

The last refuge for many of China's rarest and most economically important wild fish has mere days to secure public support before it is trimmed, dammed and ruinously diminished, conservationists warned today. The alarm was raised after the authorities in Chongqing quietly moved to redraw the boundaries of a crucial freshwater reserve on the Yangtze, which was supposed to have been the bottom line for nature conservation in one of the world's most important centres of biodiversity.

The Upper Yangtze Rare and Endemic Fish Nature Reserve was created in the 1990s as a haven for species that were threatened by the Three Gorges dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric plant. Among the hundreds of species it protects are four types of wild carp that experts say are essential to China's food security because they provide the diverse genetic stock on which fish farms depend for healthy breeding.

In recent years, the importance of this 400km-long ecological hold-out has increased as China's hunger for energy has driven power companies to build two more mega-dams – Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu – that have swamped the shoals and stilled the rapids along thousands of kilometres of Asia's biggest river. Downstream, the combination of dams, pollution, overfishing and river traffic have decimated fish stocks, wiped out at least one species – the Baiji or Yangtze river dolphin – and left others – like the giant Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus), the Chinese paddlefish or the finless porpoise – critically endangered.

EDIT

The developers appear to have gained the upper hand last week when the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced plans to redraw the boundary of the reserve so that it would no longer encompass the area of the proposed dam. This leaves less than 10 days for public discussion, according to conservationists who are dismayed there has been almost no domestic coverage, partly because many of the 29 endangered fish species – such as Chinese paddle, Yangtze sturgeon and Chinese sucker – are unknown outside of expert circles.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/18/fish-reserve-yangtze-dam

[Mojorabbit]

1. What a travesty.

I have no hope of us doing a whole lot better. When money is involved, it almost always wins.