6/25/13

6/25/13

Today we drove to Changsha city and talked to a WWF expert about the Yangzte river conservation projects. The conversation was specifically about protecting the river dolphins. River Dolphins are one of the current main focuses of WWF and they are doing “integrated management,” which is creating policy and advocating. They have campaigns for the general public to gain understanding and support. He said that River Dolphins could disappear within 10 years if more protection is not pushed, so the protection of the dolphins is crucial. In order to help the dolphins, they had to take back some of the lake that had been filled in by farmers. The lake had been filled in because the ruler at the time thought it was more important to create space for food than leave space for water. This was obviously a huge mistake! But since WWF was calling for the lake to expand again, they helped out the farmers who were losing their land to this project. They helped them by promoting and showing them alternative ways to make a living such as sustainable farming. As I mentioned before with the Panda habitat conservation areas, this is also extremely valuable for migrating birds and other animals. They are currently creating 6 protection areas for the dolphins. The dolphins do not currently inhabit most of the areas so it involves breeding and moving them. It is possible for this project to be successful because the dolphins lived in these rivers in the past. They do not currently live there because at one point the rivers were all connected and then dried apart. So although it is not currently a natural habitat for these dolphins, they did live in those rivers at one point.

We are currently on an overnight train back to Beijing!