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The Chinese Sturgeon has been around for 140 million years, but economic development may soon result in China's rarest native species disappearing for good.
Having spent more than three decades researching and protecting the wild Chinese sturgeon, Wei Qiwei can't stop worrying that this rare, ancient fish may become extinct in the coming decades.
In the past two years, researchers have discovered no evidence of natural reproductive activity in the Yangtze River for the first time since the species was first recorded in the 1980s, according to Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences. |
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"If the wild fish cannot reproduce naturally, those currently alive will be the last of their kind," he said.
The academy's records show that before 2003, female sturgeons laid their eggs from late October to late November, but between 2003 and 2012, a number of factors resulted in the spawning season being delayed by a month, to later November and early December.
Although the researchers will continue to observe the fish, the chances of detecting sturgeon eggs in the section of the Yangtze River near Yichang, Hubei province - the site of the Three Gorges Dam - are slim.
"It's estimated that there are only about 100 sturgeons in the river now, compared with more than 2,000 in the early 1980s," Wei said. |
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