Giant fish 'verges on extinction' (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Jody Bourton
Earth News reporter

One of the world's largest freshwater fish is on the verge of going extinct.

A three-year quest to find the giant Chinese paddlefish in the Yangtze river failed to sight or catch a single individual.

That means that the fish, which can grow up to 7m long, has not been seen alive for at least six years.

There remains a chance that some escaped the survey and survive, say experts, but without action, the future of the species is bleak.

The concern for the Chinese paddlefish is that its fate will parallel that of the Yangtze river dolphin, a large mammal species that was once abundant in the Yangtze river system, but has recently been declared extinct.



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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8269000/8269414.stm

[orpupilofnature57]

1. I wonder if being the worlds factory had anything to do with it?

[thunder rising]

2. We can only pray that China poisons itself faster than they poison us.

[XemaSab]

3. That's a deeply cynical comment

I like. :thumbsup:

[HamdenRice]

4. I once did an environmental fact finding trip to the upper Yangtze and it was very grim

We were based in Chengdu one of the larger cities in Sichuan. Our hosts took us on a long trip upriver along a road that runs right next to the upper Yangtze.

I kept seeing two things. One was small village cooperative owned cement factories. Cement is very easy to make. You take crushed limestone, which is abundant, and you heat to very high temperatures over a coal fire. The Yangtze in this area is lines by tall limestone hills and mountains of the kind right out of stereotypical Chinese paintings and prints, so they were literally just tearing down the mountains.

The other thing I kept seeing, I thought at first were fish traps. They looked like long cinder block walls built from the shore into the river perpendicular to its flow that then turned 90 degrees up stream.

The river was slate grey in color.

I asked if these structures were fish traps of some sort. My hosts explained that no, they were cement traps. The cement kilns dumped the coal ash, which is full of cement, directly into the river. In fact the kilns are built over the river, so you can just pull a "plug" from the bottom and the stuff falls right into the river.

Enterprising poor peasants learned that you could build these L shaped structures into the river that stop the flow of water in them and cause the cement to settle out, which they gather daily and sell back to the cement factories.

In other words, almost where it starts, the Yangtze, one of the main sources of drinking water for the country, is the consistency of cement slurry.

On the other hand, the environmental bureaucracy is very, very intent on changing things, and in Chinese politics, they have many supporters and constituents. For example, one of the biggest proponents of environmental cleanup is one of the biggest liquor distiller, also based on the Yangtze, and their problem is that they can't find any clean water with which to make liquor. Another constituency is the downstream cities and towns.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Thanks for that firsthand report. As you say, both grim and hopeful.

I was encouraged to see ordinary citizens getting a lead-dumping factory shut down.