Baiji Declared Extinct
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 14th, 2006
A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared Wednesday after ending a fruitless six-week search of its Yangtze River habitat.
The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.
For the baiji, the culprit was a degraded habitat — busy ship traffic, which confounds the sonar the dolphin uses to find food, and overfishing and pollution in the Yangtze waters of eastern China, the expedition said.
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Randall Reeves, chairman of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union’s Cetacean Specialist Group, who took part in the Yangtze mission, said expedition participants were surprised at how quickly the dolphins disappeared.
To read the rest of Charles Hutzler’s Associated Press dispatch, see here. There is also a video clip there at the yahoo news site.
Of course, cryptozoologically speaking, giving up after six-weeks seems rather early. I guess cryptozoologists will have to keep looking.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Such sad news. But “functionally extinct” may not be the end. I hope that at least a few of these animals can be found and taken to a protected facility. Maybe they could be the foundation stock for saving the species.
It’s thought that the cheetah’s population was reduced to as few as a dozen animals at some point. Yet cheetahs managed to pull through. Maybe, with our help, the baiji will eventually pull through too.
Are there captive specimens of this species? Are there enough for a captive breeding program to preserve the species?
Just can’t stress the importance of wildlife and habitat preservation enough. Hope there’s light at the end of the tunnel for this species.
Notice that this species was not “hunted to extinction”, as modern hunters we do not take any more than the excess that a habitat will sustain. No, this one is the fault of the human species overwhelming desire to dominate this planet, not live in harmony with it and its creatures. Soon we will pollute it to the point that not even us or cockroaches can survive. If you could not tell, news of the extinction of any animal nauseates me.
Well I will stop ranting and yes I do think that 6 weeks is a little too soon to declare extinction of a species. Yes, we will need to continue to search for survivors, praying that there is still a breeding population in some unknown tributary of the river that “progress” (HA) has not injected its destructive poison into.
Couldn’t agree more with “TheHunter”. What a pathetic reason for the destruction of a species. The fact is Humans will continue to abuse the planet at the expense of of other “less advanced” species to make our own lives easier right up until we pass the point of no return. We’ll eventually destroy ourselves which can only be of benefit to the planet and whatever creatures manage to survive that long.
This will happen more in China than in any other place, at any other time. China is in boom-town mode times 2.
It is sad, but the chances of it stopping now are very slim. We can only hope this can be a wake-up call for China.
It’s funny that pollution was mentioned here as one of the causes. The article I read states that the scientists said it did not appear that pollution was the culprit. It says here that a Dr. Pfluger said in a telephone interview “The river is highly polluted, but if people say that pollution killed the dolphins, that’s just not true. It’s not a toxically polluted river.” The article stated overfishing, habitat loss, and collisions with boats as the main culprits. Another cetacean in the river that is facing a rapid decline is th Yangtze finless porpoise. The population was 5,000 in the 1980’s down to 400 on this latest excursion. Pretty scary. It’s sad as the baiji was considered one of the world’s oldest species, beleived to date back as far as 20 million years. Amazing what humans can do in just a few decades.
Sad, sad news.
So sad, to survive for so long and to be snuffed out so easily.
We have to treat our environment with kid gloves. It isn’t just ours, it’s theirs too.
What a shame.
A wake-up call for China? Given that they have no concept whatsoever of human rights (just talk to some Tibetans sometime), do the Chinese have any capacity at all to recognize the value of an entire animal species?
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel for this species, but it’s increasingly likely to be the freight train known as humanity.
If, as the saying goes, everytime a person dies a library burns, how much more do we lose when an entire species dies?
Following yesterday’s news of the likely extinction of the Chinese river dolphin, Nat Geo announces today that the world’s smallest porpoise – the Vaquita – is facing extinction with only 250 – 400 individuals left; fishing net entanglements the prime culprit.
This one lives off the coasts of Mexico.
In fact this animal was even commercially hunted during the time under Mao, and only about 50 years ago, it was still comparably common, but the pollution and the many ships were surely also one of the main factors for its extinction.
As Loren Colman has suggested, it seems that the baiji has become the latest cryptozoological animal.