The Yangtze River flows for c. 6,300 km from the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau to the Yellow Sea at Shanghai, with a watershed > 1,800,000 km2, 20% of China's land area. This immense system of rivers and lakes has a rich biodiversity, including many endemics, and provides multiple ecosystem services. Although the river also supports a large human population and generates > 30% of China's GDP, it faces many severe ecological and environmental challenges. China has, however, proposed sustainable development of the whole Yangtze River system. Following visits by President Xi Jinping to Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing in the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in 2016, 2018 and 2020, respectively, he decreed that conservation and restoration, and avoidance of excessive development, must become priorities.
In 2020, a 10-year ban on fishing in the Yangtze River was implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, with fishing in all tributaries prohibited. The effects of this ban are already clear in the lower reach of Yuan River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, where a larger population of scaly-sided merganser Mergus squamatus, a prodigious fish-eater, was able to overwinter in 2020 as a result of greater food availability.
The Landmark Yangtze River Protection Law was adopted by the National People's Congress Standing Committee, China's top legislature, on 24 December 2020, and entered into force on 1 March 2021 as the country's first legislation on a specific river basin. This law bans fishing in all natural waterways of the river, and in its tributaries, estuaries and feeder lakes. It consolidates conservation of the Yangtze River and provides a reference for development of legislation for other river basins.
To complement this law, a draft Wetland Protection Law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on 20 January 2021. It is the country's first national legislation focused on conserving its wetlands. When passed, this second law will prohibit any organization or individual from destroying waterbird habitats and other wetland biodiversity.
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