Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
oxbows or other places; and 3. Intensifying captive breeding studies and establishing captive
colonies. At the same meeting, Zhou & Li (1989) also suggested that it was of urgent need to
set-up protection measures for the development of breeding colonies in semi-natural reserves.
Since the Yangtze finless porpoise has been facing the same kind of threats as the baiji has,
and is also very much endangered, the applicability of these three measures on the
conservation of the porpoises were discussed at Workshop to Develop a Conservation Action
Plan for the Yangtze River Finless Porpoise, held at Hong Kong in 1997 (Reeves et al.,
2000a). On the Second Meeting of the Asian River Dolphin Committee which was held in
Bangladesh on February, 1997, Wang et al. (2000) made three further recommendations: 1.
establish a breeding group of the Yangtze finless porpoise in the Shishou Baiji Semi-natural
Reserve; 2. Establish more natural reserves, such as in the mouth areas of Poyang and
Dongting Lakes and adjacent waters in the Yangtze River; and 3. Carry out breeding
programs in captivity. Then, a Conservation Action Plan for Cetaceans in the Yangtze River
was developed by scientists of the Institute of Hydrobiology of CAS, and was approved by
the Chinese government in 2001 (MOA-China, 2001). This plan emphasized the importance
of protecting the Yangtze finless porpoise, and proposed that the three measures identified at
the 1986 workshop should also be carried out in the protection of the Yangtze finless
porpoise. The Chinese government and scientists have been pushing forward to carry out
these three measures since then. Here, follows an updated summary of the work completed,
encountered difficulties, and overall progress.
Progress and
Difficulty
of In Situ Protection
In 1992, the first two national baiji reserves were established. One is called Honghu Xin-
Luo Baiji National Natural Reserve, which is a 135 km section of the Yangtze River between
Xintankou and Luoshan located in Honghu City of Hubei Province (Figure 1). The second is
Shishou Tian-e-Zhou Baiji Natural Reserve, which includes an 89 km section of the Yangtze
River in Shishou and a 21 km long Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow connected with this section (Figure
1). Baiji and the Yangtze finless porpoise are two main protected target animal species for
these two reserves. In 1996, the Ministry of Agriculture of China organized a workshop on
the conservation measures that targeted the baiji and the Yangtze finless porpoise. Another
five so called protecting stations were set up in Jianli, Chenglingji (a small town nearby
Yueyang), Hukou, Anqing, and Zhenjiang (Figure 1). Yueyang City set up a local reserve in
east Dongting Lake in 1996 which covers a 66,700 ha area (Figure 1). A provincial Yangtze
freshwater cetacean natural reserve located in Tongling section of Anhui Province was
established in 2000, and upgraded to a national reserve in 2006. It covers a 58 km river
section in Tongling City (Figure 1). Zhenjiang Protecting Station was upgraded as a
provincial reserve in 2003, which covers approximately a 15 km river section located in a side
channel of the river in Zhenjiang (Figure 1). A provincial Poyang Lake Yangtze Finless
Porpoise Reserve was established in 2004, which covers an area of 8,600 ha. in the lake
(Figure 1). Anqing Protecting Station was upgraded as a local (city) reserve in 2007, which
covers the total 243 km section of the river in Anqing.
By now, most of the areas or sections of the Yangtze River and two lakes with relatively
high density of the baiji and Yangtze finless porpoise are covered by these reserves. But, the
Yangtze River basin is also the most densely populated area for humans, approximately 40%
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