Rare native fish bred, tagged and released in Tibet

Fishery scientists have released tagged fish into a river for the first time in the Tibet autonomous region so they can better monitor the population of three rare species.

Some 470 tagged fish were released into the Lhasa River in August, said Liu Haiping, an associate professor at the Fishery Research Laboratory of the Tibet Academy of Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Sciences.

"We have been cultivating and releasing fish into rivers to replenish stocks since 2004, but we haven't done research before - because of the lack of money and equipment - to assess the effect of artificial breeding and release," he said.