More than 800,000 sturgeons bred in captivity were released into the upper reaches of the Yangtze River on Wednesday to revive the wild population of the endangered Dabry's sturgeon.

The release was conducted by the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG) in the city of Yibin, southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The Dabry's sturgeon, also known as the Yangtze sturgeon, is an endangered species under first-class state protection in China. It was classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2010.

The species' natural population has seen a sharp decrease since the 1980s, and it has not had the ability to breed naturally since 2000.

In an effort to restore the population of the rare species, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the Yangtze River Sturgeon (Dabry's Sturgeon) Rescue Action Plan (2018-2035) in 2018. The Yangtze River Protection Law, China's first piece of legislation for a specific river basin, came into force on March 1, 2021, strengthening the protection of the Dabry's sturgeon and other rare or endangered species.

"The large-scale release of artificially bred sturgeons has supplemented the natural population of the Dabry's sturgeon. The CTG will continue breeding Dabry's sturgeon seedlings and conduct more releases, and it will promote the restoration of the species' natural population," said Qu Huantao, who works at a CTG rare fish breeding base.

As of June 2024, CTG had released more than 24 million rare and endemic fish species into the Yangtze River basin.

(Cover image provided by the China Three Gorges Corporation.)