China's massive Yangtze River, a freshwater lifeline for tens of millions of people, is seriously and largely irreversibly polluted, a state-run newspaper said yesterday.
More than 600km of the river are in critical condition and almost 30 percent of its major tributaries are seriously polluted, the China Daily said, citing a report by the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The pollution, along with dams and heavy boat traffic, has caused a sharp decline in aquatic life along the Yangtze.
The report said the annual harvest of aquatic products from the river has dropped from 387,000 tonnes in the 1950s to about 90,000 tonnes in the 1990s.
"The impact of human activities on the Yangtze water ecology is largely irreversible," Yang Guishan, a researcher at the institute, was quoted as saying.
challenge
China's government faces a challenge in much of the country to deal with worsening pollution caused rapid economic growth and the widespread flouting of environmental regulations.
The Yangtze accounts for about 35 percent of China's total fresh water resources but it is also responsible for 70 percent to 75 percent of the country's floods, the report said.
`flood control'
"Flood control remains an arduous task along the Yangtze, given rising temperatures and frequent occurrences of extreme weather over the last 50 years," Yang said.
He said the Three Gorges Dam, the world's biggest hydropower project, reduced flood risks in the middle reaches, but the risk of flooding remained high in the lower reaches.
But the report also showed that the huge reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam project was seriously polluted by pesticides, fertilizers and sewage from passenger boats.
The Yangtze is about 6,200km long and runs from the Tibetan plateau to the sea near Shanghai, passing through some of China's major cities, such as Chongqing and Nanjing.
THE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH: Footage of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque has gone viral online after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born in July last year at Ichikawa City Zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother. Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch has turned to the toy for comfort. He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
RSS