Are Illegal Fishing Sheds Gathering Along the Songhua River? | CBCGDF Once Again Calls on the Authoritative Departments of Heilongjiang Province to Thoroughly Govern

Recently, the Songhua River volunteers of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) once again reported to the CBCGDF Policy and Research Department that the illegal fishing situation, which had been reported to the Heilongjiang Provincial Government, arose again.

“After many illegal fishing tools scattered in the river were cleaned and destroyed, new nets were thrown into the river.” Volunteers said that judging from the cleaned fishing tools, there are many kinds of prohibited fishing gear such as giant spinning nets, dense-eye foils, ground cage nets, hanging nets, flower baskets, catfish hoards, overwhelmingly. Only Alejin Island alone cleared more than 500 ground cage nets in one day.

From the catch to see, these illegal fishing tools are extremely harmful. Large fish and small fish are eaten together. Large fish are ten jins and small fish are 1 cm. All the nets are collected. Frogs and waterfowls were also affected.

Volunteers also reported that in the tidal flats, riverbanks, sandbanks, and islands of the Songhua River Basin of Harbin, and in the thick grass, there were some privately built fishing sheds, and there were hundreds of preliminary statistics. These fishing sheds were first built by the fishermen for the convenience of fishing, or because they took care of the fishing equipment and catches in the water, and they were built in private and in disorder. In recent years, there has been an increase in number, scale and harm. Some fish sheds have even reached a certain scale, and have been transformed into small houses, and they have also operated businesses such as agritainment.

(Photo credit: CBCGDF volunteers)

These fishing sheds are not only the strongholds for illegal fishing and illegal birding during the fishing ban, but also related to the dumping of domestic garbage into the river and illegal breeding of livestock and other situations. The widespread existence of fishing sheds has caused greater harm to the aquatic environment.

In May this year, after the CBCGDF policy and research department sent a letter to the relevant departments of Heilongjiang Province, the fishery department of Heilongjiang Province gave quick feedback and took positive actions to clean up the illegal fishing situation, CBCGDF also reported.

However, judging from the current situation reflected by the volunteers, it is obvious that the symptoms are not cured, and the phenomenon of illegal fishing still exists. Moreover, the volunteers worry that as the local fishing ban ends on July 31, the situation will get worse.

In accordance with national wetland protection and management regulations, multiple government departments have responsibility for wetland supervision. However, the problem reflected by the volunteers is that there is a lack of systematic and effective coordination among various regulatory agencies, and even there are inter-departmental evacuations, which has caused some wetland protection areas to be neglected, omitted, and unsupervised.

At present, the CBCGDF policy and research department has once again appealed to the Heilongjiang Provincial Government and the Harbin Municipal Government to take active measures to treat both the symptoms and the root causes and create an ecological Songhua River, and to continue to pay attention to the illegal fishing of the Songhua River and the construction of wetlands in the river basin in private and in disorder.