Rewilding & Conservation News and Discussions

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China banned all fishing to save the Yangtze River. This 'nuclear' option appears to be working.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-eart ... to-recover

Caveat:

However, the Yangtze fishing ban had huge human and financial costs, as it involved the recall of 111,000 fishing boats, the resettlement of 231,000 fishers, and an investment of more than $2.74 billion in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

"The promising findings demonstrate the resilience of these systems but are also a case study of an approach that I hope we don't have to emulate elsewhere," co-author Steven Cooke, a professor of biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, told Live Science via email. "Closing all fisheries in a river basin has significant socio-economic consequences. Fishers, and those in related industries, often move on, forever changing those communities. Managing fisheries in ways that do not require such a 'nuclear' option is always preferred."

A better approach would involve the ongoing assessment of fish populations; science-based fisheries management; and the study of watersheds as integrated systems that connect people, water and fish, he added.

[wjfox]

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink

February 11, 2026

Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world's largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals.

The Taklamakan Desert (also spelled Taklimakan or Takla Makan) is slightly larger than Montana, stretching across about 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers). It is encircled by high mountains, which block moist air from reaching the desert for most of the year, creating extremely arid conditions that are too harsh for most plants.

However, over the past few decades, China has sowed a forest around the Taklamakan's edges, and a new study suggests this approach is beginning to bear fruit.

"We found, for the first time, that human-led intervention can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid landscapes, demonstrating the potential to transform a desert into a carbon sink and halt desertification," study co-author Yuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at Caltech and a senior research scientist in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science in an email.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-eart ... arbon-sink

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Past intensive whaling threatens the future of bowhead whales

https://phys.org/news/2026-03-intensive ... whead.html

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[weatheriscool]

I want to bring back Titanboa. I want to release a few thousand back into the amazon. It would defend that forest from logging.

[firestar464]

lmao

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[caltrek]

In California, a Plan to Help Wildlife Cross a Busy Freeway
By Ryan Huling
June 12, 2026

Extract:

(Undark) I was drawn to this particular intersection because since 2022, it’s been undergoing an expansion, but not to build more lanes or on-ramps. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. In fact, once it’s done this December, the new addition won’t be paved at all. Rather, it will be landscaped with a football field’s worth of coastal sage scrub, toyon, native grapes, sunflowers, and dozens of other native plants.

Once those transplanted roots dig in, Liberty Canyon will be home to what organizers say is the largest wildlife crossing anywhere in the world. A mammoth 210-foot “vegetated bridge” that will, at least at this one critical choke point, seek to restore a natural link relied upon for millennia by not only mountain lions, but also coyotes, bobcats, birds, frogs, butterflies, and lizards.

Returning to the area for the first time since the nameless young cougar met his demise, I arranged to join Jewlya Samaniego, an ethnobotanist of Chumash and Tataviam ancestry, for a tour of the purpose-built nursery she helps maintain a few miles away from the construction site. Inside, she showed off some of the 6,000 plants she was growing as part of phase 1 of the project, all of which were cultivated from seeds foraged within a seven-mile radius. By the end of 2025, she planned to relocate them all to the crossing site and start fresh with another 40,000 plants as part of phase 2, which includes the on-ramps that connect the crossing to the adjacent hillsides. Once the phase 2 plants are installed, her job is complete and nature takes it from there.

If her efforts are successful, Samaniego said, the crossing structure will be so seamlessly integrated into the hills that it will “seem like it was always there.” A space reinvigorated by the same thick greenery that graced this place when her ancestors foraged across it centuries earlier.

The wildlife crossing, she believes, is a good-faith attempt by humanity to leverage ecosystem engineering to turn back the clock, deconflict our earlier intrusions, and acknowledge that this place has always been a vital crossroads for far more than one species.

Read more here: https://undark.org/2026/06/12/californ ... rossing/

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[caltrek]

The World Agreed to Protect 30% of the Ocean by 2030 – but Marine Protection Can’t be Judged by Area Alone
By Kirsten Grorud-Colvert and Ana K. Spalding
June 15, 2026

Introduction:

(The Conversation) The ocean is home to some of the richest biodiversity on Earth. From coral reefs and mangrove forests to the deep sea, marine ecosystems sustain countless species, support coastal communities, regulate the climate and underpin global food security.

But these systems face growing pressure from overfishing, habitat loss, pollution and climate change.

In response, nations have adopted an ambitious global goal to conserve at least 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030 – known as 30x30. This target has expanded marine protection worldwide, particularly through marine protected areas.

But what happens after protection is announced?

Decades of experience have shown that effective marine protection requires consistent rules, regulations and oversight, along with financing and meaningful collaboration with local governments, industries and communities. Without it, these areas risk becoming paper parks: lines on a map without real-world impact, where marine life may continue to face overfishing and other threats.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/the-world- ... e-285214

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