Five fish species, including the iconic Chinese sturgeon, have gone extinct, or will soon be extinct, because of dams on the Yangtze River in China, according to a paper released on 10 May 2024 in Science Advances. The Yangtze River is a mighty 6,300-kilometre-long waterway and a global biodiversity hotspot that runs through 11 Chinese provinces. But over the past 50 years, six major hydropower dams and more than 24,000 smaller hydropower stations have been built in the river’s main stream.

The paper focused on five iconic species: the Chinese sturgeon (Acipenser sinensis), the Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus), the Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), the Chinese sucker (Myxocyprinus asiaticus) and the largemouth bronze gudgeon (Coreius guichenoti). By the time of the analysis, the paddlefish was already extinct. The Yangtze sturgeons are being kept alive only through captive-breeding programs. The Chinese sturgeon is critically endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the sucker as vulnerable, and the gudgeon as endangered. The researchers’ modelling found that all five species will be entirely extinct or extinct in the wild by 2030.

Excerpts from Xiaoying You, China’s Yangtze fish-rescue plan is a failure, study says, Nature, May 20, 2024