Sturgeon returning to the Yangtze River

In a meandering stretch of the upper Yangtze River in Jiang'an county of Yibin, Sichuan province, a remarkable chapter is unfolding for the Yangtze sturgeon.

The Yangtze sturgeon, one of the oldest vertebrates on Earth, lived alongside the dinosaurs.

Endemic to China's Yangtze River, it is classified as a nationally protected first-class wild animal, once mainly found in the river's upper reaches and tributaries.

But because overfishing and habitat degradation took a heavy toll, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the Yangtze sturgeon extinct in the wild in July 2022.

China has been working out ways to save the Yangtze sturgeon — through fishing bans, legal protection, captive breeding, releasing fish into the wild, and most recently, encouraging natural reproduction in riverine habitats.

In late 2022, some research institutions launched a series of experiments aimed at inducing wild reproduction of the Yangtze sturgeon.

On April 14 this year, a scientific team announced a breakthrough: for the first time, Yangtze sturgeon had been observed spawning naturally and successfully hatching in an original spawning ground without any human intervention.

This marks the first time natural reproduction of the Yangtze sturgeon has been documented in an entirely unassisted, wild setting.

It represents a critical step toward rebuilding a wild population of a species once declared extinct in nature, and adds an important page to the story of ecological restoration and biodiversity recovery in the upper Yangtze.

Still, rebuilding a self-sustaining wild population remains a long and arduous journey.

Zhuang Ping, former director of the East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, noted that the observation of natural breeding of the Yangtze sturgeon is an encouraging sign, a signal that ecological restoration in the Yangtze is taking effect.

But Zhuang added that larger-scale conservation of the Yangtze River must continue and deepen.

He pointed out that the upper Yangtze River alone is home to more than 100 rare fish species found nowhere else on Earth, and that the recovery of the entire Yangtze ecosystem is essential for rebuilding a wild Yangtze sturgeon population.

Looking ahead, research teams will continue to monitor year-round changes in the spawning ground's habitat and study the sturgeon's migratory movements in this section of the river, in order to systematically evaluate the success of natural reproduction in the spawning ground.