Yangtze protection efforts boost water quality, wildlife: mininster

(ECNS) - China's environment minister said on Thursday that ecological protection efforts over the past decade have improved water quality in the Yangtze River basin and helped increase populations of endangered wildlife.

Speaking on the sidelines of China's 2026 political meeting, Minister of the Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said the proportion of high-quality water bodies in the Yangtze basin had risen by 30 percentage points over the past 10 years.

Huang said the population of the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise had recovered to 1,426, while the number of Tibetan antelope on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau had topped 300,000.

The plateau has once again seen the spectacle of "tens of thousands of antelope running together," Huang said.

(By Zhang Jiahao)