COP15: Aboriginal fish species under protection at Yuxi’s Xingyun lake

Zhang Sichun, head of the livestorck rearing and fishery station at the Xingyun lake in Yuxi’s Jiangchuan District, were recently busy with the incubation of the bighead carp, an aboriginal fish species at the lake.

The bighead carp used to account for 50 percent of the fish harvested in the lake, and the anabarilius andersoni, a species of cyprinid fish, made up 20 percent. In the 1980s, both of the aboriginal bulk fish species were endangered.

In 2000, the Jiangchuan fish breeding center collected 325 bighead fish for incubation research, and in 2004 the center tried other ways to gather the cyprinid fish for artificial breeding. “When we suggested that we should breed the aboriginal fish, local fishermen took it as a joke,” said Zhang Sichun.

However, Zhang and his team tried their best and succeeded. In the ongoing trails to restore the population of the Xingyun aboriginal fish, it is Zhang who provided the zoologists with rare samples of six fish species: anabarilius andersoni, spinibarbus yunnanensis, barbodes fuxianensis, cyprinus chilia, lateolabrax japonicas, and sinocyclocheilus tingi.

Source: The Publicity Department of Yuxi Municipal Party Committee; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue