Back in April, Jeremy Leon Hance wrote a truly heartfelt article for Mongabay.com on the apparent disinterest in the Baiji extinction story by the media giants in the West. I think I saw more initial coverage than Jeremy makes out (and in some surprising places), but I have to agree that what there was disappeared very very quickly. And now the Baiji is gone, what do you think? **UPDATE** The BuzzDash poll has been posted on the main BuzzDash page with a slight tweak, so I'm showing that version now...

The news came and went with an alacrity that I found alarming, almost jolting. I waited for weeks, faithfully; I could not believe that the initial announcement would be followed by nothing but silence on the issue, no rationalizations, no opinions, no discussions, no outpourings of grief. Just silence.

The ‘Goddess of the Yangtze’, the baiji, was gone from this earth and it seemed the extinction equaled the importance of, say, Captain America’s more recent and fictional death. It is during such times that I wonder if people really understand what extinction means. It is not the death of an individual; it’s a species—wholly unique in the world—that will never again grace the planet. Furthermore, this extinction was not brought on by natural cataclysm or selection; this was a species driven to extinction—not even intentionally (i.e. for food or survival) but apathetically and dumbly—by another species. I thought such a global loss deserved a little more press and certainly more feeling.

Read the rest of Jeremy's great article at Mongabay.com.