River fishing ban seen to reverse biodiversity decline

Can banning fishing reverse biodiversity collapse in a mega-river? A new study published in Science suggests that, at least in the short term, the answer is yes. 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. Crucially, the paper also highlights the scale of human transformation required to make such conservation work.

A river pushed to breaking point

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