FAREWELL TO A GODDESS

How very sad. This just brings home, once again, how selfish man actually is. We have destroyed the lives of so many of our animal friends, in our quest to conquer. whilst we seem to be aware of what it is that we are doing, we don't seem to do much about it but talk. How very sad!

Regards

Nikki

Farewell to a goddess
Guardian reporters

It lived in the Yangtze river for millions of years and was revered by the Chinese as the “goddess” of the mighty river. But now scientists believe that the baiji, a white, freshwater dolphin, is extinct.

A painstaking six-week hunt on the Yangtze for any remaining signs of the baiji ended this month with the news scientists had been dreading: there don’t appear to be any remaining. “The baiji is functionally extinct. We might have missed one or two animals but it won’t survive in the wild,” said August Pfluger, a Swiss naturalist involved in the expedition. “We are all incredibly sad.”

Also known as the Chinese river dolphin, the baiji is the first large aquatic mammal to be declared extinct since the Caribbean monk seal was killed off by hunting and over-fishing half a century ago. The marine scientists from the baiji.org foundation launched their hunt with some limited optimism six weeks ago, aware that the dolphin was in desperate peril but hopeful they would sight some of the pale, nearly blind creatures. But even halfway through the expedition the signs were looking gloomy.

The dolphin, which dates back 20-million years, has been pushed to extinction by the severe degradation of its habitat. Increasingly noisy shipping traffic on the Yangtze affected the dolphins’ sonar, while severe pollution and over-fishing diminished food supplies. The completion of the massive Three Gorges dam project upriver also did not help, worsening the decline of the smaller fish on which the baiji fed and shrinking the sand bars around which they once played.

Around 400 baiji were believed to be living in the Yangtze in the early 1980s, when China was just launching the free market reforms that have transformed its economy. The last fully-fledged search, in 1997, yielded 13 confirmed sightings, and a fisherman claimed to have seen a baiji in 2004.

The closest most modern Chinese people got to the creature was Qi Qi, a female baiji found in the river in 1980, who lived in an aquarium until her death in 2002. The chances of a miraculous return from presumed extinction seem extremely remote, given that the team of 30 scientists from five countries searched a 1 600km stretch of the Yangtze over the six weeks.

At least 20 to 25 baiji would now be needed to give the species a chance to survive, they say. The disappearance of the “goddess of the Yangtze” is a sobering reminder to the Chinese government about the extent to which the country’s economic transformation is affecting the environment. According to Pfluger, China’s agriculture ministry had hoped the baiji would end up being another giant panda, an animal brought back from the brink of extinction in a highly marketable effort that bolstered the country’s image.

Almost equally under threat is Yangtze finless porpoise, whose numbers have fallen to below 400, the expedition found. “The situation of the finless porpoise is just like that of the baiji 20 years ago,” the baiji.org expedition group said in a statement. “Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second baiji.”

-- © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2006