From this February, China is to impose a full commercial fishing
ban along the Yangtze River, the country's longest, the Chinese
Ministry of Agriculture said Friday.
The ban will cover 10 provinces and municipalities along the
Yangtze River which has been divided into upper and lower areas by
the Ministry to enable the ban to be imposed at different
times.
Qi
Jingfa, vice agricultural minister, said the ban would take effect
from February to April in the upper reaches of the river from
Yunnan Province in the southwest to central China's Hubei Province,
and from April to June in the lower reaches of the river from Hubei
to east China's Shanghai.
China expected the ban would help reverse decades of overfishing
and pollution on the river, Qi said.
According to official statistics, the river's annual take of wild
fish had fallen to about 100,000 tons a year, only about one fourth
of what Yangtze fishermen routinely caught in 1954.
The Yangtze River, from its headwaters high on the Tibetan plateau,
develops into the world's third largest river as it cuts across
China. Its fishing catch accounts for 60 percent of the country's
total freshwater fish output.
(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2003)