China has expanded and extended fishing bans on the country’s second-longest river, prohibiting catches on the upper reaches of the Yellow River all year round. In a notice issued on Wednesday, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said fishing would be banned on the upper reaches of the beleaguered Yellow River from April 1 until the end of 2025. The ministry has also extended a seasonal ban on fishing in the mainstream, 13 tributaries and three major lakes by one month from April 1 until July 31. It introduced the seasonal ban in 2018 to help conserve fish stocks in the waterway. China plans to clean up Yellow River and give its ‘sorrow’ a brighter future Fish species have been in obvious decline in the river over the past 15 years, with the number of species roughly halving since 2007, according to state news agency Xinhua. “A survey of the mainstream of the river in 2008 recorded 54 fish species, mainly small fish,” Xinhua reported in April. The Yellow River runs for 5,464km (3,400 miles), starting in the Tibetan Plateau and passing through nine provinces and autonomous regions to the Bohai Sea. It is second in length only to the Yangtze, which is covered by a total fishing ban introduced in 2021 . But the Yellow River has traditionally been less of a source of freshwater fish, contributing less than 0.2 per cent of the country’s total in contrast with the 60 per cent that the Yangtze once provided. Researchers said the ban on the Yangtze had been successful and the same model was being applied to the Yellow River. “The ecological effects of the fishing ban on the Yangtze are obvious. Now we are using this successful model on the Yellow River to restore its fish resources,” said Zhou Haixiang, an ecology professor at Shenyang Ligong University. According to state-run Farmers’ Daily , a total ban was applied to a Yangtze tributary, the Chishui, in 2017 and fish resources had doubled since then. The porpoise population has been sighted more often in Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake, as well as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, the report said. However, Wang Yamin, a professor at Shandong University’s Marine College, said the Yellow River fishing ban was “symbolic” because there were very limited fish stocks in its upper reaches. “The Yangtze has China’s richest fishing resources but the Yellow River does not have much, especially in the upper and middle reaches of the river. There’s not much difference with or without the moratorium,” he said. Wang agreed that fish stocks had risen since the Yangtze ban, but more needed to be done. “There were many reasons for the decline in the Yangtze, including water pollution, dam-building, overfishing, and water flow regulation, and the fishing ban can partly alleviate the problem.” Wang called on the country to establish a water resource coordination mechanism that not only considered rural irrigation and power generation but also water used by aquatic animals. What India can learn from China’s resolve in cleaning its urban air Sara Platto, an associate professor on animal behaviour and welfare at Jianghan University in Wuhan, said the fishing ban was positive but the government should not leave the fishermen behind. “The fishing ban is good in general because it really allows the system to get rest from overexploitation. My only concern goes to the people,” she said. “I really hope the local government is going to use the fishermen to protect the river in some way to help the ecosystem to be restored … They represent the library knowledge of the ecosystem of that area. If you lose them, you’ll lose a huge ecological knowledge.”
