Former fishers at fore of refreshing Yangtze

Editor's note: As protection of the planet's flora, fauna and resources becomes increasingly important, China Daily is publishing a series of stories to illustrate the country's commitment to safeguarding the natural world.

Over the past five years, Tang Shengrong has spent almost every day by the Yangtze River. What excites her most is seeing more and bigger fish in its waters.

"Five years ago, you could barely see any fish in the river. Later, groups of small fish appeared. Now, you may come across big ones weighing 35 to 40 kilograms — about this long," she said, stretching her arms wide to demonstrate.

Tang, 53, is an assistant patroller in the city of Yibin on the upper reaches of the Yangtze in Southwest China's Sichuan province. Born into a fishing family, she became a fisherwoman at 19, until a national fishing ban came into effect on Asia's longest river in 2020.

In January that year, China began a decade-long fishing moratorium in 332 conservation areas along the 6,300-kilometer Yangtze. Starting on Jan 1 the following year, the ban was expanded to the entirety of the river's main channel and key tributaries, as well as to large lakes in the Yangtze River Basin such as Poyang and Dongting.

The ban aims to help the river recover from dwindling aquatic resources and degraded biodiversity due to years of overfishing.

Yibin, located around 200 km south of Chengdu and 200 km southwest of Chongqing, is known as the "first city along the Yangtze", as the river's two major tributaries — the Jinsha River and the Minjiang River — come together in the city's downtown area to form Changjiang, or Yangtze as it is known in English.

As of July 2020, all 1,186 fishers in Yibin had packed away their rods and nets.

To facilitate their transition to new livelihoods, the local government offered them compensation packages, along with free entrepreneurship and employment training and subsidized startup loans.