Published : 2025-02-01

On February 1, 2003, China implemented a three-month spring fishing ban throughout the Yangtze River basin for the first time.

According to a spokesperson from the Fisheries Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, this fishing ban along the Yangtze River covers more than 8,100 kilometres of river sections in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Shanghai, and other provinces and cities.

This includes 4,090 kilometres in the main stream of the Yangtze and more than 4,000 kilometres in tributaries. Major lakes such as Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake and more than 50,000 professional fishing fishermen are also affected.

During the fishing ban, the buying and selling of river fish species, fishing by citizens along the river, and the operation of river fish businesses by hotels and restaurants are all prohibited and will be considered illegal.

Since the mid-1980s, resources of certain economically valuable fish species in the Yangtze River region have gradually depleted, and many rare aquatic wild animals, such as the Baiji dolphin and the Chinese paddlefish, face extinction.

To conserve and rationally utilize fishery resources in the Yangtze River, curb the continuous decline of these resources, and ensure the sustainable development of the Yangtze River fishery economy, the Ministry of Agriculture trialed a fishing ban system in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in 2002.