United States and Russia (Graham 1986, Smith
1990, 1991, Khodorevskaya et al. 1997 this volume).
Perhaps Dabry’s sturgeon could also be maintained
by artificial stocking, particularly because culture
methods for the fish has already been developed.
Enhancement stations could be established along
the Jingsha River at Yibin (Sichuan Province) and
below Gezhouba Dam at Yichang (Hubei Prov-
ince) to release juveniles lor stock enhancement.
(4) Research on Dabry’s sturgeon should be in-
creased. Up to now, very limited information is
available on the biology and life history of Dabry’s
sturgeon, and many more topics need study. A par-
ticularly critical step in the conservation of Dabry’s
sturgeon is to determine where the populations
spawn so that those areas can be precisely protect-
ed.onomic development, more and more factories are
built in the Yangtze Valley. Much untreated waste
water discharges into the river each year. For in-
stance, Wenjiang district in upper Ming River pours
out 10 million tons of industrial waste water to the
Ming River each year. Also, many agricultural
chemicals are used in Yangtze Valley. (5)Habitatal-
terations and destruction.The upper Yangtze Valley
is seriously deforested, so that vast amounts of silt
are washed to river, muddying its waters and in-
pacting fishes and their food organisms. Perhaps
most important are the negative impacts of hydro-
electric projects. Since the construction of Gezhou-
ba Dam in1981,adult Dabry’s sturgeon trapped be-
low the dam cannot migrate upstream to the origi-
nal spawning areas, and no suitable spawning
grounds have been found below the dam. Young
fish cannot pass the dam to reach the feeding
grounds in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River
and the lakes linking up with it. The Three Gorges
Dam, currently under construction, will inundate
many habitats of Dabry’s sturgeon. Other dams
have been built, are being built, or will be built in
upper Jingsha River and its tributaries. These struc-
tures may alter the populations of Dabry’s sturgeon
in the main stream system by restricting their nat-
urd movements or by influencing spawning behav-
ior (Wu et al. 1991).
In conclusion, we propose some tactics for the
conservation of Dabry’s sturgeon. (1) Commercial
fishing of Dabry’s sturgeon must be strictly forbid-
den. Although Dabry’s sturgeon has been listed as
an endangered species and is under special protec-
tion, net fishermen still catch them accidentally.
Caught fish are usually hurt, cannot survive easily,
even if they are immediately released to the river
mesh nets and detrimental fishing methods must beAcknowledgementsWe thank Vadim Birstein, Robert H. Boyle and
John Waldman for organizing the International
Sturgeon Conference. We thank Boyd Kynard for
constructive suggestions in preparing our draft. We
are also grateful to Ling Ling and Mu Tianrong for
help collecting new data on population dynamics.
James D. Williams, Frank M. Parauka, Kim Gra-
ham and Theodore I. J. Smith provided valuable
foriegn reference materials. William E. Bemisre-
viewed and substantially revised the original draft
of our manuscript and drew the map.References citedagain (L. Ling personal communications). Small Bemis, W.E. & L. Grande 1992. Early development of the acti-
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