Dead planet, living planet

CASE STUDY #16

Lake Hong case in the Yangtze: Restoring the Lake Hong for fisheries, biodiversity and water supply

plying other restorationmethods. Wintering water birds from the North have returned back to the lake. In 2006, the Lake Hong won the award of The Best Practice of Lake Protection of the Living Lakes Network at the elev- enth Living Lake Conference, and was designated as a RAMSAR site by the Chinese government in 2008. Source: Lifeng Li, WWF International and Gang Lei, WWF Chi- na personal communication, 2010. Photo credits: Zhang Yifei, WWF China.

The amazing scenery of the Lake Hong has described in a classic Chinese ballad, but most people have never seen it. In the 1990ies millions of bamboo posts were standing in the Lake for intensive enclosed fishery, some 43% of the wild fish species were gone or nearly gone, the water was infested and polluted with algae blooms, and the migra- tory birds vastly gone. More than 70% of the Lake was fully fenced by fishing nets, and was divided into small farming plots. Consequently, a serious ecological crisis was threat- ening the Lake Hong: degradation of water quality, loss of aquatic plants, decrease of fishery resources, and loss of biodiversity such as water birds. With support of WWF-HSBC Programme – Restoring the Web of Life in the Central Yangtze, a wetland restoration dem- onstration project in the Lake Hong was initiated in 2003. Through tailored interventions, e.g. removing fishing nets, reintroducing local fish species for farming, plantation of aquatic grasses, aquatic vegetation on the pilot area was fully restored, with aquatic grass coverage raising to 80 %, water quality improved from Grade V (for agriculture use only) to Grade II (drinkable after simple treatment). Some rare birds e.g. Purple Swamphen and the globally endangered species Oriental White Stork returned back to the Lake Hong after 20 years absence. Moreover, the incomes of fish farmers partici- pating in the project tripled within three years as a result of improved environmental conditions. Inspired by this success- ful pilot, in 2005, the Hubei provincial government decided to allocate a budget of near 1 million USD (7.3 million RMB) to restore the entire lake by removing all fishing nets and ap-

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