The International Union for Conservation of Nature has officially confirmed that the Chinese paddlefish and wild Yangtze sturgeon are extinct on their endangered species list.
The Chinese paddlefish, or Psephurus gladius, was one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, weighing up to 660 pounds and measuring up to 10 feet in length. They were grey, had a white belly and small, round eyes. These fish are endemic to freshwater wetlands in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins. They migrated upstream to their mouth in the East China Sea to spawn during mid-March to early April.
The Chinese paddlefish has been protected since 1989. As the iconic fish species was economically valued for its rarity, it was caught for human consumption and often as bycatch.
In 1996, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the Chinese paddlefish critically endangered. The last sighting of this fish in the wild was in 2003.
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In 2005, an integrated recovery program was established to conserve the species by studying habitats and foraging behavior, establishing captive breeding programs, and conserving genetic resources.
In 2019, the Chinese paddlefish was listed as extinct on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. A recent reassessment released on Thursday confirmed the disappearance of the Chinese paddlefish.
Another species of freshwater river fish, the Yangtze sturgeon, or Acipenser dabryanus, was listed as Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species in 2019. The recent reassessment has relisted the Yangtze sturgeon as extinct in the wild.
Yangtze sturgeons were endemic to the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin. They are blue-gray, have yellowish-white bellies, and have large holes. This species of fish can grow up to 35 pounds and 4.3 feet.
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Since the 1970s, Yangtze sturgeon have been bred in captivity and released into the Yangtze basin, but unfortunately do not reproduce in the wild.
Acipenseridae are economically important for their culinary value caviar, but the world’s remaining 26 sturgeon species are also at risk of extinction. Because female Yangtze sturgeons could lay up to 102,000 eggs and their meat was considered a delicacy in China, they were caught en masse for human consumption.
Population declines of both Chinese paddlefish and Yangtze sturgeon are due to human impact and environmental degradation, such as overfishing and overharvesting, habitat fragmentation, deforestation, mining, water pollution (wastewater and runoff) and dams. The construction of Gezhouba Dam and Three Gorges Dam blocked the anadromous migration of Chinese paddlefish, reducing their reproduction for offspring.
Featured image via New China TV (left) and CBS News (right)
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