Extinction

Following links from Boing Boing today, I discovered that the CNN News has declared the Yangtze Baiji Dolphin has been declared extinct. It’s the first known cetacean to die out completely, and that was a pretty sad thing to read. Then I read some excerpts from Douglas Adams’ only Non-fiction book, Last Chance to See. He writes about many endangered animals in it, including this dolphin.

As I watched the wind ruffling over the bilious surface of the Yangtze I realized with the vividness of shock, that somewhere beneath or around me there were intelligent animals whose perceptive universe we could scarcely begin to imagine, living in a seething, poisoned, deafening world, and that their lives were probably passed in continual bewilderment, hunger, pain and fear.

[…]

At the end they said, ‘The residents in the area gain some profit – that’s natural – but we have more profound plans, that is to protect the dolphin as a species, not to let it become extinct in our generation. Its protection is our duty. As we know that only two hundred pieces of this animal survive it may go extinct if we don’t take measures to prevent it, and if that happens we will feel guilty for our descendants and later generations.’

Source

Sadly, not even the Chinese efforts were enough to save this animal, who lived it’s last years in a world of static noise and disorientation, starving to death due to inability to find food, and dying at the sharp hands of boat propellers and fish hooks. Hopefully this serves as a warning to help other similarly endangered species.