Sad news from the Baiji

He is no longer there. “The Chinese river dolphin is extinct”, says Petra Deimer, President of the Society for the Conservation of Marine Mammals. “This is a sad and irreversible fact”.

Using high-performance optical and acoustical instruments in boats, a multi-national research group scoured more than 3500 kilometres of the Yangtze River, the habitat of these dolphins (also known as baiji) – to no avail. “It’s possible that we missed one or two animals”, says August Pfluger, one of the organisers of the search, “but that really wouldn’t affect the reality of their extinction”.

Scientists have attributed their decline to several different factors. The impact of the building of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, for example, illegal fishing and ship collisions are the main culprits. Add to this the pollution of the water – after all, 350 million people live along the banks of the Yangtsze. About 20 years ago, there were approximately 400 of the 1.2 to 2.5 metre-long Lipotes vexillifer, ten years ago there were only 13 sightings, two years ago only one, and now this last, painstaking search has proved fruitless.

There are now only five species of freshwater dolphins in the world – three are on the Red List of Threatened Species.

Walter Karpf