On 21 July 2022, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) updated the Red List of Threatened Species. The latest list shows that the Yangtze River endemic species Psephurus gladius has become extinct, while the smaller Yangtze River sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus) has become extinct in the wild.
Hearing this news, it is really frustrating and painful, there are many Yangtze River white sturgeon that were fished for 50,000 kilograms per year in the 1960s and 1970s, and the word "extinction" was used in just one year. Many people say that the human mouth is really too powerful to eat and "extinguish" a species. And this species was not originally a rare species, but a large number of species.
It is not wrong to say that people's "mouths" are strong. The extinction of the white sturgeon is indeed closely related to the capture of people along the Yangtze River. But a little sense of biological protection, a little kindness, will not make the white sturgeon extinct. However, the extinction of the white sturgeon, is it really just the "mouth" of people? Is it really completely arrested and extinct, eating extinction? Apparently, the extinction of the white sturgeon, in addition to catching, has other reasons.
The Yangtze River white sturgeon, also known as the Chinese spoon-kissed sturgeon, belongs to the same family as the spoon-kissed sturgeon that lives in the Mississippi River, also known as the Chinese swordfish. The history of the Yangtze River white sturgeon dates back 150 million years, a period known by scholars as the Cretaceous period. In the Book of Poetry, there is a description of "there are tuna and there are sturgeons", and the "tuna" in it refers to the white sturgeon. In the "Book of Rites" and "Zhou Li", the scene of zhou tianzi's spring sacrifice to the temple is also described as "the son of heaven began to take a boat and recommended the tuna in the sleeping temple".
The Yangtze River white sturgeon is a large and ferocious fish, and the saying spread by Sichuan fishermen is "a thousand pounds of wax and ten thousand pounds of elephants, and the yellow row is not very large." "Lazi" refers to the Chinese sturgeon, "elephant" refers to the Yangtze River white sturgeon, the famous zoologist Professor Bingzhi once caught a 7 meters long, 1 ton white sturgeon in Nanjing. The Yangtze River white sturgeon is mainly distributed in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and the number of Yangtze River white sturgeon has declined since the 1980s.
So why did the Yangtze River white sturgeon decline sharply from the 1980s? At first, it was undoubtedly the capture of residents on both sides of the Yangtze River, which led to a rapid decrease in the number of white sturgeon in the Yangtze River. However, with the increasing number of bridges on the Yangtze River, the ecological environment of the entire Yangtze River has undergone great changes, and the living conditions of the Yangtze River white sturgeon have become worse and worse, and the reproductive capacity has also undergone relatively large changes. On the one hand, the volume of hunting is getting bigger and bigger, forming a pattern of "short supply"; On the other hand, reproduction is becoming slower and slower, and fewer and fewer amounts can be provided to catch. The deterioration of the contradiction between supply and demand in the market has made the supply more tight, the demand has been more inflated, and slowly, the last white sturgeon in the Yangtze River has also been "eliminated".
Perhaps, whether the last white sturgeon was "extinguished" by hunting or "extinguished" by the living environment, it is impossible to verify that it died at a very young age. But one thing is for sure, the Yangtze River white sturgeon is indeed extinct, and whether the Yangtze River white sturgeon will reappear in the future depends on whether the Yangtze River has such a creation, and whether human beings have seen the blessing of the Yangtze River white sturgeon again.
Unfortunately, as early as 1983 and 1987, the Environmental Protection Commission of the State Council twice included the Chinese white sturgeon in the "List of Wild Animals under Key Protection", and both were listed as national level I protected wild animals. However, it has not been well implemented, and artificial breeding has not been able to keep up, so that by 2020, the last white sturgeon will die. Previously, in 2019, the Yangtze River has begun to ban fishing. However, the white sturgeon is already on the verge of extinction, and it is too late to protect it, and when the last white sturgeon dies in 2020, it is waiting for the official declaration of the extinction of the Yangtze River white sturgeon. In the two years since the death of the last Yangtze River sturgeon in 2020 and the official announcement to the public, miracles have not occurred, and the figure of the Yangtze River white sturgeon has not been found again.
Once upon a time, humans and the Yangtze River sturgeon also lived in harmony. In "Huainanzi", there was a description of "the drum of the urn, and the obscene fish listening", which depicts the harmonious coexistence of humans and white sturgeon. However, as the ecology of the Yangtze River is getting better and better by modern bridge-building technology, more and more enterprises distributed along the Yangtze River such as chemical industry, more and more pollutants discharged to the Yangtze River, coupled with people's mouths becoming more and more hungry, not to mention the Yangtze River white sturgeon, even the Yangtze River's most blue fish, grass carp, silver carp and bighead carp "four big fish" have also encountered a production crisis, if you can no longer prevent catching, the fish in the Yangtze River, really want to appear a large-scale extinction phenomenon. If bridges continue to be built everywhere, all kinds of organisms may be in danger of extinction.
The ten-year ban on fishing on the Yangtze River is a time to make up for the dead sheep, but whether or not we can really make up for the "prison" still needs the joint cooperation and strong support of all localities. In particular, the residents along the Yangtze River must proceed from the overall situation, do not continue to destroy the ecology of the Yangtze River for the sake of temporary interests, and ensure that the Mother River can really be bright, active, and the fish laugh.