Drawing on six years of monitoring across 57 river reaches, Fangyuan Xiong and colleagues show that China’s unprecedented basin-wide fishing ban has halted seven decades of biodiversity decline in the Yangtze River. Large-bodied fish, which are often the first victims of sustained fishing pressure, showed the strongest response, with biomass increases exceeding 230%. Fishing pressure matters but people matter tooA major strength of the paper lies in its attempt to identify why recovery is happening. Modelling indicates that eliminating fishing pressure was the single most important driver of increased fish biomass and species richness. Removing fishing pressure worked because it was basin-wide, enforced, and paired with substantial investment in people as well as habitats.

Source: Irish Examiner February 20, 2026 07:30 UTC