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> The article also talks that its not only happening in China these old paddlefish species are endangered all over the globe. What remarkable a looking fish, i

• refenestrator 5y ago
  Just last summer there was major flooding up and down the Yangtze. It used to be that lots of people died from these events, now that they have the river under control it's fine. Calling it simply 'development' obscures the very real human benefits.
  • msrenee 5y ago
    There's definitely more than one side to this issue. Do be aware that it isn't just this one species affected by this dam though. There are likely dozens or more other species that suffered the same fate. Some of them may not even have been known to science before they disappeared forever. Dams are extremely hard on fish populations. The real shame here though is that there are solutions available to mitigate the interruptions caused by damming rivers. It appears none were taken though. We have the same issue here in the US. I'm less familiar with dams, so I'll talk about the channelization of rivers to keep them navigable year-round for transportation of goods. The Missouri River used to meander to a much, much greater extent than it does now. It used to move back and forth over the course of hundreds of years between the loess deposits in the Midwest. This created a number of slow-moving backwaters where many species of fish would lay their eggs. The most common example of this is the pallid sturgeon. With the straightening and taming of the river, they lost most, if not all of their breeding habitat. Capture of individuals that are under 15 years old that are not traceable back to a captive breeding project is essentially unheard of. Even adults which are not tagged and previously used for breeding are few and far between. If you don't care about fish, how about birds? The Platte river was historically described as a mile wide and an inch deep. It was marshy, slow-moving, and full of sand bars where birds like the Piping Plover made their nests. In order to reduce the flood risk and claim some of that fertile land for agriculture, the stream was directed into a much narrower and straighter path. With more water flowing down a narrower channel, sandbars became much less common and were at much higher risk of being washed over, taking eggs and chicks with them. The interior population of the plover was drastically reduced. At the same time, the population on the eastern seaboard were being displaced from their dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. People like the beach, like living there and like playing in the sand. That habitat was taken over by homes and businesses and what was left semi-natural was used for recreation and the birds could no longer safely nest there. Human use and animal use have to be balanced. Relatively few species can thrive directly alongside humans, but humanity isn't going anywhere any time soon either. It's not the fault of the 9-year-old who wants to run through the dunes that these animals are disappearing, but we still need to keep a certain amount of nature in its natural state so that we don't lose even more of our native species. Dams are necessary in some cases to keep homes from flooding. However there's got to be a better solution that damming a river completely and building in what used to be valuable habitat.
• msrenee 5y ago
  This is more or less what modern zoos do. They fund the conservation efforts using income generated from sales at the park. At the one here, the majority of animals aren't on display. They're maintained in the back areas for breeding, study, and conservation. There's breeding populations of native plants and beetles from the region as well as threatened species from around the world.
• rmah 5y ago
  To call the Yangtze dam a "short term gain" is ... short sighted. Now, I can't speak to the effectiveness of the dam, but its goals and objectives were literally epic in scope. But to understand the goals, you have to understand the history, and that history stretches so far back that it merges with legend... Legend has it that one of the early great kings of china was 大禹 (Yu the Great). But what made him great? Was he a great conqueror like Alexander? Was he a descendant of the gods? No. Yu was "great" because he built the first major floods control projects for the Yangtze river. Pause and think about this for bit. How horrible must the floods have been for a king to have literally entered legendary status for managing them? The Yangtze river has been the lifeblood of northern China for thousands of years. But it has also literally killed 100's of millions of people. Historically, the river floods quite often, and once in a while floods on a massive, epic, scale. The sort of flood that covers thousands of square miles under many meters of water. The sort of flood that wipes out settlements across vast swaths of land and kill millions of people. Then millions die of disease and starvation. The mouth of the Yangtze has moved hundreds of miles during recorded history. And this doesn't happen little by little... it happens catastrophically with huge floods that have kill 10s of millions. Think of the Mississippi mouth moving from where it is today to someplace in south texas or georgia. The Yangtze river is that kind of epic (but not in the good way). The Three Gorges Dam was built with the intention of finally, once and for all, controlling the Yangtze. Now, in a few centuries, maybe history will show that it was a bad idea. Or maybe history will show it was one of the most important works of civil construction in human history. Hard to say right now. But what is clear is that it wasn't built with "short term gain" in mind. That dam is the definition of long-term civil engineering (for good or ill).
  • selimthegrim 5y ago
    The Mississippi mouth would have already moved to Morgan City if not for the Old River Control Structure.