Dolphins are beautiful miraculous creatures. They are gentle and smart aquatic mammals. Due to heavy over fishing, ship traffic, and pollution, it is a sad announcement to say that the Baiji white dolphin has now been declared extinct. This marks the first time in over 50 years that a large aquatic mammal has been declared extinct.
A six week search was conducted through the Yangtze River, the dolphin’s habitat, but today the after no Baiji was sighted, the status was declared. The dolphin had existed on the planet for over 20 million years and was honored and respected by the Chinese. The same damage to the Yangtze River is responsible to the rapid decline of the Yangtze finless porpoise. The porpoise’s population is now below 400.
The Baiji Foundation’s website has posted the following on the Yangtze River’s chemical composition:
In more than 30 samples of water and suspended particles a set of 260 organic substances, 20 trace metals, major ions and nutrients are currently being analyzed, and will be given to the Chinese administration and be made available in an international scientific journal. Preliminary results will be commented on in a short report in spring 2007.
For more information, please visit the foundation’s website.
Heartbreaking. We’ve got to do better. Thanks to the Baiji Foundation for all their hard work.
Peggy Farabaugh
http://www.VermontWoodsStudios.com
12/14/06 » 9:55 am »
The Passing of a Friend » Celsias
[...] I spotted this solemn piece of news over at Eco-Chick.com. It would be nice if this was just a mistake – something a recount would rectify – but it’s not looking good. The Baiji Yangtze Dolphin, that lived in the Yangtze River of central China for millenia, “is with all probability extinct.” The Baiji is the first large mammal brought to extinction as a result of human destruction to their natural habitat and resources. – Baiji.org [...]
12/15/06 » 11:12 am »
This was very sad news indeed. At the China environment website I work for, http://www.chinadialogue.net, we carried a piece by a leading Chinese environmental campaigner http://www.chinadialogue.net/a.....-the-baiji
Now more bad news comes from the Yangtze. The finless porpoise is under threat. An optimistic estimate puts these Yangtze river dwellers’ numbers as low as 14000 – not yet facing imminent extinction but falling at 7.5 per cent a year. Sand dredging and heavy shipping traffic have been blamed. http://www.chinadialogue.net/a.....-the-baiji
It’s a sad tale – let’s hope it’s not a repeat of the baiji story.
03/15/07 » 12:09 pm »