CHINA:For millions of years, the white-fin dolphin, or baiji, peacefully swam the mighty Yangtze, but a few short years of breakneck development, over-fishing and a massive increase in shipping on China's longest river means sightings of this shy, graceful creature have become increasingly rare. And now, non-existent.
A recent expedition failed to spot a single one of the dolphins known as "the goddess of the river" and now conservationists fear the almost-blind, long beaked animal is gone for good, the first large acquatic mammal to become extinct because of human activities.
"We have to accept the fact that the baiji is functionally extinct. It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world," said August Pfluger, joint leader of the expedition and who runs the Swiss-based baiji.org, an environmental group dedicated to saving the dolphins.
Chinese scientists are not giving up and said the search would continue for the dolphin, after the group of 30 Chinese and foreign scientists plied the length of the Yangtze looking for the rare cetacean for six weeks but failed to make any sightings.
But as Mr Pfluger says, even if there are one or two dolphins left, they are ultimately doomed. "If there are maybe one or two or three left in the river, we don't believe that they have any chance to survive. We were obviously too late. For me, it's a tragedy in terms of conservation. We lost the race," he said.
Measuring up to 2.5 metres in length, the baiji is a relative of other freshwater dolphins found in the Mekong, Indus, Ganges and Amazon rivers. It used to be worshipped as a goddess by locals and according to legend, the beiji is the reincarnation of a princess who refused to marry a man she did not love and was drowned by her father for shaming the family.
Already listed as one of the 12 most endangered species in the world, there were still 400 white-fin dolphins alive during the 1980s, but that number dropped alarmingly to less than 150 in the last decade. A survey in 1997 listed just 13 sightings, with the last confirmed sighting in 2004. The final baiji in captivity, Qi Qi, died in 2002.
Keen to replicate the success at breeding with endangered species that it had with pandas, the Chinese government set up a reserve in a lake in central Hubei province to look after captured baiji, but failed to find any of the dolphins to start an artificial propagation programme.
The expedition surveyed the 1,700-kilometre-long river using special equipment to detect the sound of dolphins. There are some slight hopes, as some of the sounds gathered have yet to be identified.
If the white-fin dolphin, which is one of the oldest mammals on the planet at around 20 million years old, is indeed extinct, it will be the first big aquatic mammal to disappear since hunters killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.
Wang Ding, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who led the team of 25 scientists from China, the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany and Switzerland, said the search would go on as there might still be some left in the wild.
"We will try every effort to save them as long as it is not announced to be extinct," he said, adding that the monitoring of hot spots and small-scale searches would continue.
"The expedition only covered the main section of the Yangtze river and the scientists only searched for the dolphins eight hours a day, which means some dolphins might have been missed."
The white-fin dolphin is top of the food chain in the Yangtze and has no natural enemy on the waterway. Except for man.
