ChinaDialogue News

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:19:00 +0000

More than 99% of all major global airlines have complied with the first step of the European Union’s scheme to charge them for their carbon emissions, The Guardian quoted Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, as saying. Only eight Chinese airlines and two Indian ones did not submit required baseline emissions data for 2011 by the 31 March deadline – now extended to mid-June.

Chinese airlines will not abide by the system without being ordered to do so by their government, China Daily cited an official of the China Air Transport Association as saying. In February, the country’s Civil Aviation Administration forbade the airlines from abiding by the EU scheme without Chinese government permission.

Beijing will introduce fuel standards on May 31 that municipal officials say are close to the EU’s Euro V standards, China Daily said. All fuel in the city will need to adhere to the new standards, which are expected to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from 50 to 10 milligrammes per kilogramme, according to the Beijing environmental protection bureau.

The US consulate in Shanghai began issuing its own pollution statistics, giving a much more pessimistic assessment of the city’s air quality than does official Chinese data, according to Agence France-Presse. Hourly air-quality data from a monitoring device at the consulate is posted online and via Twitter. As at the US embassy in Beijing, the consulate monitors smaller particles known as PM 2.5.

An advanced pollution-monitoring system developed by British scientists, which scans air quality across whole cities, is to be trialled in London during the Olympics in July, the Press Association reported. Unlike conventional “hotspot” systems, it provides a wide-ranging “map” that can show air quality at every point in a city – allowing for pollution readings at specific places, such as road junctions and children’s playgrounds.

Leaders of the G-8 countries committed themselves to a “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition” in association with African and other nations, Zee News said. Aimed at lifting 50 million people out of poverty over the next decade, the alliance aims to speed the flow of private capital to African agriculture, foster innovations to increase sustainable agricultural productivity, and reduce the risk borne by vulnerable economies.

The US imposed punitive tariffs of about 30% on solar panel imports from China, Reuters reported. The commerce department acted after ruling in favour of American companies that accused Chinese exporters of “dumping” cut-price panels. “By deliberately provoking trade friction in the clean-energy sector,” China’s ministry of commerce said, “the US is sending the world a negative signal about trade protectionism.”

More than 100 aftershocks rattled Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck small towns on the plains north of Bologna, The Guardian said. At least seven people were killed in the quake, which drove thousands from their homes and also seriously damaged churches, clock towers and castles, some dating back centuries.

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:19:00 +0000

China’s first deep-water drilling rig began operations near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, Bloomberg News reported, quoting Xinhua. CNOOC, the county’s largest offshore-oil producer, began drilling on May 9, about 320 kilometres south-east of Hong Kong and north of the islands claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan. Competition for undersea energy reserves has increased tensions in the region.

The amount of plastic in the ocean area known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” has increased a hundredfold since the early 1970s, growing in both size and density, according to new research cited by the San Jose Mercury-News. Published online by Biology Letters, the study also showed that insects that eat zooplankton and fish larvae were laying a growing number of eggs on the plastic.

Debris from the tsunami that followed the massive March 2011 earthquake in Japan has swept across the Pacific faster than expected, The Guardian reported. While most of the estimated 4.8 million tonnes of debris pushed into the sea is believed to be destined for the “garbage patch”, smaller and lighter objects are beginning to wash ashore in the US and Canada.

Taiji, the Japanese town criticised for nearly a decade for its annual slaughter of dolphins, is to build a 28-hectare marine mammal park, according to the Brisbane Times. The town plans to populate the park with bottlenose dolphins and small whales caught nearby. In the yearly hunt – seen in the film “The Cove” – up to 2,000 animals are killed for their meat or sold to aquariums and marine parks. The hunt will continue, officials said.

Following pressure from animal-welfare campaigners, a British company that had been financing a large foie gras factory farm in China has suspended the project pending a review, The Guardian said. Pâté de foie gras, considered a delicacy, is produced by force-feeding geese or ducks until their livers become enlarged; it is banned in most European countries.

Lead poisoning that affected more than 50 people at a plant in Jiayuguan, Gansu province, resulted from the workers inhaling steam from high-temperature raw materials and absorbing it through their skin, a preliminary investigation showed, according to Xinhua. Tongjia Renewable Resources mainly focuses on the smelting and processing of pig iron.

Drinking water is safe to consume in the small Pennsylvania town that became the centre of US debate on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas, Reuters quoted the US Environmental Protection Agency as finding. Residents of Dimock, which featured in the documentary “Gasland”, have complained since 2009 of cloudy, foul-smelling water.

A huge fire that swept through a sprawling squatters’ colony along Manila Bay left thousands of people homeless, the Associated Press cited officials in the Philippines as saying. Many of the Tondo district residents, who have been evacuated to a sports complex, lived in shanties built on stilts.

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Rescuers searching through mud and debris for flash-flood victims in north-western Nepal have found at least 17 bodies, the Associated Press quoted police as saying. Another 47 people were missing and presumed dead after the Seti River burst through an avalanche and sent water gushing through villages along its banks.

Sea-level rises are unlikely to be as high as worst-case scenarios have forecasted, The Guardian reported American researchers as suggesting. Their study, published in Science, shows that Greenland’s glaciers are slipping into the sea more slowly than was previously thought. But ice loss still sped up by 30%, the scientists noted, and is driving sea-level increases along low-lying coasts.

Norway opened what it says is the world’s largest and most advanced laboratory to test carbon-capture technologies, Reuters reported. The facility is designed to test exhaust gases from two sources – a combined heat and power plant and an oil refinery.

Several major Chinese cities have some of the world’s highest per-capita carbon footprints, according to a World Bank report cited by China Daily. Data from Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing indicate that about 40% of urban emissions come from power generation and another 40% from industrial activities, largely because of coal use.

Power shortages are expected after Hokkaido Electric Power shut down a nuclear plant in northern Japan for maintenance, leaving the country without an operating reactor for the first time in 42 years, Bloomberg News said. Japan has 50 reactors with a power capacity of 46,148 megawatts.

Ireland granted planning permission for the first phase of a huge Chinese trading hub in the Irish midlands, Reuters reported, paving the way for what could eventually become Europe’s largest source of branded goods from China.

South American nations’ interest in reclaiming privatised energy businesses grew as president Evo Morales of Bolivia said he planned to seize control of the country’s main power grid from a Spanish-owned company, Red Eléctrica Corporación, The Guardian said. His statement follows a move by Argentina to take control of its oil company, YPF, from Spain’s Repsol.

New US rules on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, were introduced, intended to strengthen oversight on oil and natural-gas drilling on federal land, Reuters reported. In the Czech Republic, meanwhile, the environment ministry plans a moratorium on granting licences for shale-gas exploration until new legislation is put in place.

Over 800 dolphins and 1,500 seabirds have died since the Peruvian government began tracking the deaths in February, according to The New York Times. Officials attributed the species’ deaths, respectively, to a virus and a shortage of anchovies. Some scientists say offshore oil exploration may be disturbing wildlife, while others fear that biotoxins or pesticides might be working their way up the food chain.

Coca-Cola Shanxi Beverages acknowledged that some of its products were contaminated by chlorine in February, Xinhua said, during a routine maintenance procedure. The company apologised for the contamination of nine batches of its products.

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:23:00 +0000

Oil giants ConocoPhillips and CNOOC agreed to pay 1.7 billion yuan (US$269 million) for environmental damage caused by last summer’s leak in northern China’s Bohai Bay, the Financial Times reported. The money will be used to compensate harm inflicted by the spill and to support environmental initiatives in the region, including habitat restoration and research, the country’s maritime watchdog announced.

A coalition of researchers and NGOs released the world’s largest public database of international land deals, lifting the lid on a decade of secretive agreements in developing countries that have seen 5% of Africa’s agricultural land sold or leased to investors since 2000, The Guardian reported. Chinese company ZTE International is the second biggest investor listed in the Land Matrix database thanks to a 2.8 million hectare deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

New figures from China’s drought-relief authority revealed that the country’s lingering water shortages have left almost 8.6 million people without sufficient drinking water, according to Xinhua. Droughts have also harmed more than 3.6 million hectares of farmland, mostly in the provinces of Yunnan, Shanxi, Hubei, Sichuan and Gansu, officials said.

Water authorities in north-west China’s Shaanxi province unveiled plans to invest 6 billion yuan (US$952 million) in flood prevention and environmental clean-up on the Weihe River, the longest and most polluted tributary of the Yellow River, China Daily reported. The money will be used to fight pollution and to finance projects including dike-widening, tree-planting and bridge-building, the provincial water resources bureau said.

The koala has been classified as a threatened species in parts of Australia for the first time due to the “serious threat” from factors including urbanisation and climate change, ABC reported. The government hopes to stem the species’ precipitous decline which has seen numbers fall by 40% in Queensland and one third in New South Wales over the past 20 years.

Humans are causing a steep fall in populations of reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean, a new study covered by CNN showed. Marine scientists from the University of Hawaii estimated reef shark numbers near inhabited areas had fallen by more than 90% after surveying and comparing the waters around settled islands and the most untouched reefs.

Work stopped at the controversial El Morro copper-gold project in Chile after the country’s Supreme Court revoked its environmental approvals, Reuters reported. The permit for the project, which is 70% owned by Canada’s second largest gold miner Goldcorp, was suspended on grounds that indigenous people had not been adequately consulted or compensated.

China’s industry ministry announced a target to close 7.8 million tonnes of steelmaking capacity and 700,000 tonnes of copper smelting capacity this year as part of efforts to reduce pollution and improve efficiency, Reuters said. It is also aiming to remove 270,000 tonnes of aluminium capacity and 10 million tonnes of iron-making capacity, both much lower than last year’s targets.

A Chinese environmental update

chinadialogue — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Premier Wen Jiabao landed in Iceland on Friday, beginning a tour of northern Europe that will focus on Chinese investment in a region eager for funds but wary of China’s hunger for natural resources, Reuters reported. Wen also will visit Germany, Poland and Sweden for talks on investment and industrial projects.

Iceland expects a cooperation deal with Wen on developing energy resources in east Africa, where China is a large investor and buyer of raw materials. Reuters added that his trip has fueled European concern that China might be trying to exploit Iceland’s economic troubles to gain a strategic foothold in the North Atlantic and Arctic region, rich in oil and gas, gold and diamonds, iron and zinc.

About 100,000 people living in the Three Gorges Dam area could be relocated over the next three to five years, Shanghai Daily said, with massive landslides and Yangtze riverbank collapses expected to hit the area as the dam’s water level reaches capacity. The prospect of controlling or preventing geological disasters in the near future is not promising, the land-resources minister, Liu Yuan, was quoted as telling China National Radio.

A national island-protection plan released by China’s oceans agency forbids development of any of the country’s 1,020 islands designated for special purposes, according to Sina. Without official permission, all activities that could change the nature of the areas are strictly banned, as well as picture-taking, mapping and surveying.

Sixteen endangered finless porpoises have been found dead since the beginning of the year and, said Agence France-Presse, experts blame water pollution, climate change and other factors for pushing the “river pig” toward extinction. The freshwater cetacean lives mainly in the Yangtze River and two lakes linked to it – Dongting in Hunan province and Poyang in Jiangxi.

In collaboration with other Chinese institutions, scientists from BGI – a premier genome-sequencing centre – announced they have cloned the world’s first transgenic sheep, according to Asian Scientist. The animal, Peng Peng, has a gene associated with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, essential for healthy heart functioning and normal development of the brain, eyes and neurons. His birth, say researchers, means that in the future, people could absorb the acids by drinking milk or eating meat.

China’s food and drug safety watchdog withdrew the production licences of two medical-capsule producers in Zhejiang province, China Daily said, amid a scandal involving the manufacture of contaminated gelatin capsules. Licences of the Huaxing and Zhuokang plants were revoked for “grave violations of laws and regulations”, and other inquiries are under way.

Workers exposed to silica dust in mines and in pottery and gemstone factories are at higher risk of death from respiratory diseases and lung cancer than those employed in cleaner environments, Reuters reported Chinese-led researchers as writing in PLoS Medicine. Breaking new ground, the scientists also found heightened risk of cardiovascular disease in workers with long-term exposure.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

。

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:10:00 +0000

Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance market, has become the first major business organisation to speak out about huge potential environmental damage from oil drilling in the Arctic, The Guardian reported. The institution’s chief executive urged companies “to think carefully about the consequences”, as any oil spill in the Arctic, particularly in ice-covered areas, would present multiple obstacles, constituting a “unique and hard-to-manage risk”.

French research published in Nature Geoscience shows that the glaciers flowing between the central peaks of the Karakoram range, on the Pakistan-China border, have grown in the last decade, The Guardian said. The scientists used three-dimensional altitude maps obtained from satellites in 2000 and 2008 to track the glacier changes. While hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice are lost annually from icecaps and glaciers through global warming, it is not yet understood why the Karakoram bucks the trend.

The Greenland Ice Sheet may be sliding faster into the ocean due to massive releases of meltwater from surface lakes, according to a study by the Colorado-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, according to Click Green. Such lake drainages may affect sea levels, the researchers noted, with implications for coastal communities.

A new national reserve, the Land of the Leopard National Park, has opened in Russia’s Far East, RIA Novosti reported, created expressly to protect Amur leopards. Their population has declined steadily for more than a century and has reached a critical level.

The Australian airline Qantas conducted the country’s first commercial flight using a mixture of jet fuel and recycled cooking oil, Agence France-Presse said. In what it hopes will be the first step toward a sustainable national aviation-fuel industry, Qantas flew an Airbus A330 from Sydney to Adelaide using the biofuel – which the airline said has a much-reduced carbon footprint.

With the decline of shipbuilding and other traditional industries in Northern Ireland, Belfast’s historic Harland and Wolff shipyard is at the heart of a broader push to establish a foothold in the green-energy sector, according to the Financial Times. Having begun to manufacture wind turbines in recent years, Harland and Wolff is attracting renewable-power companies as Belfast repositions itself as a green-energy hub.

A temporary cathedral made of cardboard is planned for Christchurch, New Zealand, following the February 2011 destruction of the city’s 131-year-old Gothic-style cathedral by an earthquake, Reuters reported. The replacement, an A-frame structure designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, will be built of cardboard tubes, timber beams, structural steel and a concrete pad.

British environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth has sparked furious debate on the planet’s future, withdrawing from campaigning and arguing that humans have so thoroughly damaged the planet that further small gains are pointless, Grist said. Following publication of his essay “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist” in Orion earlier this year, he has been called a catastrophist and a fatalist, as well as a realist and a truth-teller.

A Chinese environmental update

chinadialogue — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:55:00 +0000

China set up a 155-member rare-earth industry association in a move to speed consolidation of the sprawling sector, Reuters quoted state media as saying. Su Bo, an industry vice-minister, said the government wants to phase out small smelters, giving large players a greater stake in the supply of rare-earth metals and boosting environmental protection.

Jiangxi province earned 32.9 billion yuan (US$4.89 billion) from the rare-earths industry last year, but has to spend 38 billion yuan to address the environmental pollution in the city of Ganzhou alone, China Daily quoted an Economic Information report as saying. Extraction of rare-earth minerals is environmentally devastating.

ConocoPhillips and China National Offshore Oil Corporation are to pay around 304.5 million yuan (US$48.3 million) to compensate fishermen in Qinhuangdao city, Hebei province, and to restore its maritime environment following spills in Bohai Bay’s Penglai 19-3 oilfield last June, Shanghai Daily reported.

China’s economic might has “rolled up to America’s doorstep in the Caribbean”, according to The New York Times, with loans from state banks, investments by companies and gifts from the government in the form of new stadiums, roads, buildings, ports and resorts. The development has raised eyebrows among diplomats, economists and investors.

Some Chinese medicines contain potentially poisonous plants, unlabelled ingredients and bits of endangered animals, Australian research has found, according to The Age. An DNA sequencing analysis of ingredients in 15 traditional medicines seized by customs officials found that three-quarters contained undeclared products derived from animals, including the critically endangered Asiatic black bear, said the study, published in PloS Genetics.

A Greenpeace investigation has detected pesticides banned for use in tea in products marketed by some of China’s top tea companies, Global Times said. The finding was based on tests of 18 products from nine companies, all purchased in December 2011 and January 2012 in Beijing, Chengdu and Haikou. Independent testing found that 12 of the samples contained at least one pesticide banned from use in tea, such as methomyl and endosulfan.

The run-down Canidrome racetrack near Macau’s border with China – the only greyhound track in Asia – is being targeted by animal activists who accuse its owners of brutality and of killing dogs after their racing days end, according to The Guardian. Officials at the track in Macau, China’s gambling hub, declined to comment.

Pristine natural forests in China are threatened by logging, mining, unregulated harvesting of flora for traditional Chinese medicine and excessive development linked to increases in tourism, according to the Asia Society. See Sean Gallagher’s video, “China’s Fragile Forests”, here.

Prepared in cooperation with PACE

。

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:10:00 +0000

Harsh weather conditions hampered the search for 138 people buried under a massive avalanche at a Pakistani army camp high on the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir, The Nation reported. A wall of snow crashed into the Gayari base in the eastern Karakoram mountain range on April 7, smothering a kilometre-square area. Hopes of finding any survivors are slim.

Amid a long-running territorial dispute, Pakistan and India are engaged in a military standoff in the region that is wreaking havoc on the environment as well as costing soldiers’ lives, Agence France-Presse said. The heavy military presence is reportedly speeding up the melting of the glacier, one of the world’s largest outside the polar regions, and leaching poisonous materials into the Indus river system.

The French energy giant Total plans to plug a leak of potentially explosive gas from a stricken North Sea rig by the end of April, Agence France-Presse reported a company executive as saying. Total intends to pump “heavy mud” into the well – which has been leaking since March 25 – to cut off the gas, and to drill two relief wells.

Chevron has discovered an oil seep in an offshore Brazilian field run by Petrobras, near the site of a November leak that led to civil and criminal charges against the US company and its drilling contractor, Transocean, Reuters said. The new leak stokes broader concerns about the safety and speed with which Brazil can develop new offshore resources.

Artemesinin, the world’s most effective malaria drug, is losing its power, threatening the lives of millions of people around the world, The Independent cited a study in The Lancet as finding. Tests along the Thai-Burmese border show that the most deadly form of the malaria parasite has developed resistance to artemesinin, considered for more than a decade to be the best treatment for the disease.

One of the world’s biggest funders of science, the Wellcome Trust, is backing a growing campaign to allow all research papers to be shared online, The Guardian reported. So far, nearly 9,000 researchers have agreed to boycott scientific journals that restrict free sharing. The Wellcome Trust is the second-largest non-governmental funder of medical research, and its support is thought likely to galvanise the “academic spring” movement.

James Hansen of the US space agency NASA, a leading climate-change expert, has urged Britain not to build any more coal-fired power stations, the BBC said. A mixture of new-build nuclear-power generation and renewables is the best combination in addressing global warming, he said.

Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, recently wrote that averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, and he argues, according to The Guardian, that it would be an “injustice of one generation to others” to store up expensive and destructive consequences for the future. He also supports a flat-rate global tax on carbon emissions.

A global environmental update

chinadialogue — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:24:00 +0000

Rescuers were searching the Dallas area for anyone trapped in the rubble left behind by a string of violent tornadoes that swept through northern Texas on Tuesday, CNN reported. Up to 13 twisters are believed to have touched down in the US state, destroying at least 150 homes.

A parliamentary committee in Nepal gave the go-ahead for China Three Gorges Corporation to build a US$1.6 billion hydroelectric dam on the Seti River, wrote the Wall Street Journal.The Chinese state-owned company had threatened to pull the plug on its investment last month after the Nepalese government raised concerns over the contract bidding process.

Japan said it would delay a decision on restarting two offline nuclear reactors, as public safety fears compete with concerns over constricted power supplies, Reuters said. Energy minister Yukio Edano said more time was needed to choose a date for switching on reactors at Ohi nuclear plant, the first of 53 sites closed after the Fukushima disaster to pass government-imposed stress tests.

Reuters also reported a warning from Japanese experts that the country’s sea defences are not robust enough to meet the threat of 34-metre high tsunamis, which could be triggered by future offshore earthquakes. Two official studies offered a revised worst-case scenario, and said much higher waves could hit Japan’s coast than previously thought.

New figures compiled by the International Energy Agency (IEA), and seen by The Guardian, showed that countries in sub-Saharan Africa received less in overseas aid last year than they paid out for oil imports, following a decade of soaring prices. IEA economist Fatih Birol said the only solution is for developing countries to shift to renewable energy sources.

The British government renewed an attempt to kick start the carbon capture industry with a £1bn offer for schemes that will trap carbon dioxide from power stations and pump it underground, the BBC reported. An earlier programme to promote the technology – which is a key part of the country’s low-carbon strategy – collapsed after all nine entrants withdrew, blaming high costs.

French energy company Total was preparing to fly a team of experts to its stricken North Sea platform to assess options for stemming a leak that is spewing out 200,000 cubic metres of gas each day, Reuters said. Environmental campaigners warned the leak, which has formed a highly explosive cloud around the site, will make it harder for Scotland to meet its climate targets this year.

Climate change may be causing the Matterhorn, one of the most celebrated Alpine peaks, to physically disintegrate, a new report covered by The Independent suggested. Researchers at Zurich University said subtle shifts under the surface, triggered by melting water entering cracks and subsequent cycles of freezing and thawing, were causing lumps of rock to fall off the mountain.

。

A Chinese environmental update

chinadialogue — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:25:00 +0000

PetroChina is now the world’s biggest publicly traded producer of oil, surpassing ExxonMobil, the Associated Press reported. The Chinese company announced that it pumped 2.4 million barrels of oil a day last year, surpassing Exxon by 100,000 barrels. PetroChina has grown rapidly, squeezing more from China’s oil fields and acquiring more petroleum reserves in Canada, the Middle East and elsewhere.

On his first trip to China as Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook visited an iPhone production plant in Hebei province run by the Foxconn Technology Group, Reuters said. As a major part of Apple’s supply chain, Foxconn is being accused of improper labour practices. In recent years, a number of workers have killed themselves and activists have attributed the deaths to tough working conditions.

The Apple boss also met in Beijing with vice premier Li Keqiang, according to China Daily, and won a guarantee from the Chinese government about intellectual property rights at a time when Apple is embroiled in a trademark dispute and is trying to curb the smuggling of its popular electronic products.

Production at Zhenxing Fertiliser in Shanxi province was suspended after the company illegally discharged sewage into the Wenyu River in Wenshui county last year, killing fish and shrimp and causing crops to fail in 26 villages, Shanghai Daily said. China Central Television showed black water being released directly into the river. The government of Luliang city, which oversees Wenshui, is to decide how the company should compensate local people.

In a crackdown that began at the start of March, at least 15 people have been detained in Guangdong province for manufacturing and selling toxic glue blamed for poisoning dozens of workers, according to Xinhua. By the end of February, four of 39 workers reportedly poisoned at shoe and leather workshops in Guangzhou had died. An initial inquiry showed they suffered from acute dichloroethane poisoning.

Authorised collectors of restaurant waste in Zhengzhou, Henan province, often face refusals, threats and beatings from unscrupulous “gutter oil” dealers in competition for the 10 tonnes of leftovers produced daily by the city’s eateries, China Daily reported. The only authorised collecting company turns the waste in fuel, while other dealers often recycle the dirty oil for use in cooking, a practice believed to be unsafe.

Seasonal fishing bans are to be imposed on the Pearl River and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze next month, Sohu said, as part of China’s efforts to rescue its declining wild-fishing resources. The restrictions on the Yangtze are the 11^th annual attempt to preserve biodiversity in the country’s longest river.

Fewer migratory birds spent the winter in the Dongting Lake wetlands of Hunan province, Xinhua reported, as last year’s drought and recent persistently cold weather have meant a severe food shortage for the birds. In a two-day research project, staff at China’s second-largest freshwater lake recorded a 40% decline in avian visitors.