(National 3A-class)

The great Yangtze River, of abundant water resource, runs a long course from remote sources. It not only accomplishes the world famous Gezhouba and Three Gorges projects, but also brings out the valuable water panda – “Chinese Sturgeon”.

This garden has been listed into national 3A class tour sites and first national examples of agricultural tourism. It mainly exhibits the living Chinese sturgeon and its kind of specimen. The Chinese sturgeon, called the water panda, is the first class protected animal of China. Of large body in fish family, the grown-up Chinese sturgeon will reach over 4 m in length, and over 500 kg in weight, which is the top of other sturgeon in the world. “Thousands of years” is always a long history for human, but not enough for Chinese sturgeon. According to the unearthed fossils, the Chinese sturgeon has a history over 140 million years. The name “Chinese Sturgeon” has two origins. On the one hand, this sturgeon was first found in China.

On the other hand, the name came from its habit and characteristics. Every year, the grown-up Chinese sturgeon will swim upstream along over 3000 km Yangtze River from the ocean, and return its spawning site in Jinsha River, a branch of the Yangtze River. And new-born little sturgeons will swim down stream along the Yangtze River to the ocean, and come back again when grown up. They had been living in this cycle since the very beginning. Just like a Chinese tourist will come back his hometown in the end. The Chinese sturgeons are of strong directivity, for they will never get lost in hundreds of Yangtze branches; and also, they are of strong endurance, during the reproduction period, they won’t eat anything for almost 2 years until their sex gland are grown up. The Chinese sturgeon is well known as “the living fossil”, “the water panda”, “the Yangtze fish king”, and “the sturgeon dragon” etc.

However, the construction of Gezhouba and Three Gorges projects has cut off their migration route. In order to save this endangered species, the state government determined to set up several manual reproduction centers.

Today, with the help from home and abroad, the Chinese sturgeon garden has become a well-known wild fish reproduction and protection center, as well as an education center and ecotourism site. Along past over 20 years, this garden have freed near 5 million children sturgeons in the downstream Yangtze River, among which over 300 thousand is of large body. At the same time, this garden also provides service for other endangered fishes, such as the Yangtze paddlefish, the Yangtze sturgeon, the mullet, the Heilongjiang sturgeon, the Heilongjiang Huso dauricus, the American paddlefish, the south bullhead catfish, and giant salamander etc.  Especially, the packaged technologies for reproduction of mullet and American paddlefish are keeping ahead in the same industry.