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Legislation system lacking scientific basis undermines ecological health of Yangtze River

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Abstract

Legal frameworks aim to protect environmental systems through regulations, treaties, and conservation measures. However, lacking scientific basis, these policies may exacerbate environmental degradation, particularly when addressing complex socio-environmental issues. We reviewed China’s environmental legislation related to ecosystem protection of the Yangtze River and evaluated legislation effectiveness by analyzing illegal fishing cases from 2015 to 2021 that were prosecuted under China’s Environmental Public Interest Litigation framework. Our findings reveal that court-ordered fish release remedies often undermine the ecological health of the River, leading to discrepancies between environmental protection policy goals and actual ecological outcomes. Specifically, mismatches between the taxa of illegally caught fishes and taxa specified for release, species misidentification, and a bias toward economically valuable species in court-ordered release decisions were common. These results underscore the importance of integrating ecological expertise into legal practice when collecting species information and developing remedial actions to improve the ecological health of targeted ecosystems.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are stored and available for access and download in Zenodo at [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19041360].64 The repository contains a single Excel file with multiple spreadsheets that include all EPIL cases analysed in this study, the associated category data, and the fish catch-and-release data used to generate all figures and perform the correlation analyses. All relevant data used in this study are available from the authors upon request. Such request can be made to the first author.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Dr. Ge Feng and Dr. Lin Yanmei(Vermont Law and Graduate School) for their valuable support during data collection and for sharing their expert insights and advice during the early stages of this study. We also thank Zihan Feng for assistance with data visualization. In addition, we are grateful to Dr. Clifford E. Kraft (Cornell University) and Dr. Emily Hite (Saint Louis University) for reviewing the manuscript and providing valuable suggestions for its improvement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, USA

    Binbin Wang & Jason H. Knouft

  2. WATER Institute, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, USA

    Binbin Wang & Jason H. Knouft

  3. National Great Rivers Research and Education Center, East Alton, IL, USA

    Binbin Wang & Jason H. Knouft

  4. Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Hao Zhuang

Authors

  1. Binbin Wang
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  2. Hao Zhuang
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Contributions

Binbin Wang oversees the structure of paper and conducts data and biological analysis. Hao Zhuang oversees paper structure, reviews the legal framework, and conducts litigation case research and analysis. Jason H. Knouft supports the overall paper structure, reviews and provides technical comments and suggestions.

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Correspondence to
Hao Zhuang.

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Communications Earth and Environment thanks Linas Svolkinas and Yu-Chun Kao for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Temitope Sogbanmu and Alice Drinkwater. A peer review file is available.

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Wang, B., Zhuang, H. & Knouft, J.H. Legislation system lacking scientific basis undermines ecological health of Yangtze River.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03475-2

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