It mostly talking about how in the 80 and 90s they didn't do those preservation research when building dams.
The article also talks that its not only happening in China these old paddlefish species are endangered all over the globe.
Agree species are dying everywhere after all we are in an Holocene extinction event. That said it seems to happening at a faster pace in places like India and China with unfettered development.
Most efforts to preserve animals come after the damage is done. That's why we maintain an endangered species list.
I'm not going to argue that China is as committed to, or as successful at, the goal as say the US is, but "not as good" is very different from claiming they fundamentally lack something the West possesses.
As someone in the US, I know about the EPA and the DOI. I don't however know of such comparable government level agencies in China or any other country.
Whenever anyone asks a question about certain countries, the responses are hypercritical, adversarial or defensive regardless of the questioner's intent.
Perhaps this isn't about nations, but about 1) how sad it is for such a unique species to be extinct, 2) a cautionary tale.
Also, where I live (Indiana, USA) we have a native paddlefish species that was nearly fished to extinction by a ring of criminals that were killing them for their caviar. I wonder if something like that was happening with the Yangtze version? (Article doesn't mention)
how are they doing now? recovering?
I simply asked, and continue to ask without anyone being able to answer it: Are there any organizations in China that have any real power to do anything to protect the ecosystems critical to animal life or is it unfettered development >> ecosystem.
Nevertheless, the organisation tasked with protecting the environment in China is called the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. To quote Wikipedia:
> The Center for American Progress has described China's environmental policy as similar to that of the United States before 1970. That is, the central government issues fairly strict regulations, but the actual monitoring and enforcement are largely undertaken by local governments that have a greater interest in economic growth.
Unless you're including sturgeon in that group, there is now only one surviving species of paddlefish. That one, thanks to heavy conservation efforts, is listed as vulnerable, but not endangered. It's actually legal to sport fish in many states but takes are heavily regulated. The closely related sturgeon species are also struggling.
What remarkable a looking fish, it looks more like a shark with a very elongated nose. Well, pat-on the-back progress aside of their 'efforts', I feel that this is in-line with not just the CCP's outview on the World, but Humanity in general.
Biodiversity be damned (no pun intended) if it stands in the way of short term gain(s). Personally speaking, I think Wildlife and Marine biologists need to collaborate on maintaining these species all over the World in captivity, a real purpose for a zoo if there ever was one, to avoid this problem. I can't stand to see a wolf or a giraffe in a zoo, it makes me sad and I haven't been to one since I was forced to go when I was kid.
As an adult I could justify going every 6 months if I knew these served primarily as a way to conserve endangered animals. Pandas being a chief example of it already being done.
I have a lot of qualms with zoos in general and places like Sea World, I went to university with a well known marine biology program and the amount of collusion between Sea World and the biology department was rather blatant at times.
The lessons we learned from the past 20 years in Tuna farming should serve as a model of what happens when you deplete the Oceans so bad you have to resort to man-made hatcheries for a highly consumed staple--I fear that this species of fish may not have the same recognition and thus a market price for it's survival and thus is deemed insignificant.
Despite being a staunch Free Market advoacte, I'm well aware of the inadequacies of market based solutions alone to prevent, let alone, solve environmental setbacks like these and I fear we have run of time or options that ensured Governments could solve these either. It will require a massive uptick in the need of individuals to do this.
If social media can topple a career with cancel culture over minor indiscretions, and make corporations apologize for BS things deemed not palatable to 'woke' mob then surely a strong drive to make them accountable for conservation should be possible, too.
This being China, I think it's low on the list of atrocities the CCP has committed, even against it's species and this very little will be done to do more than distract from the real issue.
Legend has it that one of the early great kings of china was 大禹 (Yu the Great). But what made him great? Was he a great conqueror like Alexander? Was he a descendant of the gods? No. Yu was "great" because he built the first major floods control projects for the Yangtze river. Pause and think about this for bit. How horrible must the floods have been for a king to have literally entered legendary status for managing them?
The Yangtze river has been the lifeblood of northern China for thousands of years. But it has also literally killed 100's of millions of people. Historically, the river floods quite often, and once in a while floods on a massive, epic, scale. The sort of flood that covers thousands of square miles under many meters of water. The sort of flood that wipes out settlements across vast swaths of land and kill millions of people. Then millions die of disease and starvation. The mouth of the Yangtze has moved hundreds of miles during recorded history. And this doesn't happen little by little... it happens catastrophically with huge floods that have kill 10s of millions. Think of the Mississippi mouth moving from where it is today to someplace in south texas or georgia. The Yangtze river is that kind of epic (but not in the good way).
The Three Gorges Dam was built with the intention of finally, once and for all, controlling the Yangtze. Now, in a few centuries, maybe history will show that it was a bad idea. Or maybe history will show it was one of the most important works of civil construction in human history. Hard to say right now.
But what is clear is that it wasn't built with "short term gain" in mind. That dam is the definition of long-term civil engineering (for good or ill).
Calling it simply 'development' obscures the very real human benefits.
We have the same issue here in the US. I'm less familiar with dams, so I'll talk about the channelization of rivers to keep them navigable year-round for transportation of goods. The Missouri River used to meander to a much, much greater extent than it does now. It used to move back and forth over the course of hundreds of years between the loess deposits in the Midwest. This created a number of slow-moving backwaters where many species of fish would lay their eggs. The most common example of this is the pallid sturgeon.
With the straightening and taming of the river, they lost most, if not all of their breeding habitat. Capture of individuals that are under 15 years old that are not traceable back to a captive breeding project is essentially unheard of. Even adults which are not tagged and previously used for breeding are few and far between.
If you don't care about fish, how about birds? The Platte river was historically described as a mile wide and an inch deep. It was marshy, slow-moving, and full of sand bars where birds like the Piping Plover made their nests. In order to reduce the flood risk and claim some of that fertile land for agriculture, the stream was directed into a much narrower and straighter path. With more water flowing down a narrower channel, sandbars became much less common and were at much higher risk of being washed over, taking eggs and chicks with them. The interior population of the plover was drastically reduced. At the same time, the population on the eastern seaboard were being displaced from their dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. People like the beach, like living there and like playing in the sand. That habitat was taken over by homes and businesses and what was left semi-natural was used for recreation and the birds could no longer safely nest there.
Human use and animal use have to be balanced. Relatively few species can thrive directly alongside humans, but humanity isn't going anywhere any time soon either. It's not the fault of the 9-year-old who wants to run through the dunes that these animals are disappearing, but we still need to keep a certain amount of nature in its natural state so that we don't lose even more of our native species.
Dams are necessary in some cases to keep homes from flooding. However there's got to be a better solution that damming a river completely and building in what used to be valuable habitat.