![]() With fewer wild carp to bolster farm stocks, environmental experts say China is taking a risk with a primary source of protein. Less often calculated is the economic loss of biodiversity. Local government insists no decision has been made on the dam, but past precedent suggests that construction will begin before the formal environmental impact assessment is made, by which time developers will argue that it would be a huge waste of money to cancel. ![]() 'Part of the problem is that unlike pandas, snub-nosed monkeys or Tibetan antelopes, most people have not heard of or seen the fish affected.' It is a rare situation when one project can do so much damage,' said Ma Jun of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, one of the country's leading green campaign groups. 'This is the last hold-out for much of China's freshwater biodiversity. This leaves less than 10 days for public discussion, according to conservationists who are dismayed there has been almost no domestic coverage, partly because many of the 29 endangered fish species – such as Chinese paddle, Yangtze sturgeon and Chinese sucker – are unknown outside of expert circles. The developers appear to have gained the upper hand last week when the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced plans to redraw the boundary of the reserve so that it would no longer encompass the area of the proposed dam. Premier Wen Jiabao has expressed unease about the impact of excess dam-building on environmentally important areas.īut this goal has run up against the interests of the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation and local officials, who want to build yet another hydroelectric plant at Xiaonanhai that would choke the river to power the development of the poor local economy. A coalition of scientists and conservationists has opposed development in the reserve. Upriver, the state has promised to safeguard the last untamed stretch. In recent years, the importance of this 400km-long ecological hold-out has increased as China's hunger for energy has driven power companies to build two more mega-dams – Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu – that have swamped the shoals and stilled the rapids along thousands of kilometres of Asia's biggest river.ĭownstream, the combination of dams, pollution, overfishing and river traffic have decimated fish stocks, wiped out at least one species – the Baiji or Yangtze river dolphin – and left others – like the giant Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus), the Chinese paddlefish or the finless porpoise – critically endangered. The Upper Yangtze Rare and Endemic Fish Nature Reserve was created in the 1990s as a haven for species that were threatened by the Three Gorges dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric plant.Īmong the hundreds of species it protects are four types of wild carp that experts say are essential to China's food security because they provide the diverse genetic stock on which fish farms depend for healthy breeding. The alarm was raised after the authorities in Chongqing quietly moved to redraw the boundaries of a crucial freshwater reserve on the Yangtze, which was supposed to have been the bottom line for nature conservation in one of the world's most important centres of biodiversity. In addition, model simulations suggest a condition of sulfate in excess of requirement for microbial sulfate reduction in the Refuge.The last refuge for many of China's rarest and most economically important wild fish has mere days to secure public support before it is trimmed, dammed and ruinously diminished, conservationists warned today. This modeling work emphasizes the fact that sulfate from canal discharge is impacting even the interior portions of the Refuge, supporting work by other researchers. Statistical analysis indicated that our model is capable of capturing the spatial and temporal variations in surface water sulfate concentrations across the Refuge. The model has been calibrated and validated using long-term monitoring data (1995-2006). Meanwhile, sulfate removal resulting from microbial sulfate reduction in the underlying sediments of the marsh was estimated from the apparent settling coefficients incorporated in the model. In this research, we developed a sulfate mass balance model to examine the response of surface water sulfate in the Refuge to changes in sulfate loading and hydrological processes. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (Refuge), a remnant of the historic Everglades, in pumped stormwater discharges with a mean concentration of approximately 50 mg L-1, and marsh interior concentrations at times fall below a detection limit of 0.1 mg L-1. However, it has received less attention compared to phosphorus enrichment. ![]() Sulfate contamination has been identified as a serious environmental issue in the Everglades ecosystem.
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