This Epoch Times article discusses the extinction of the Baiji, the Yangtze River Dolphin. It is desperately sad that since Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine tried to find the Baiji for the original radio series episode "Gone Fishing!", this beautiful creature has been declared extinct.

In 1998 there was an estimated total of only seven dolphins left. When the filling of the Three Gorges reservoir began in 2003, it seemed that the white dolphin was no more. While there were a few rare sightings at this time, the evidence was questionable.

When an expedition in search of living Yangtze dolphins began in November 2007, the results looked very grim. For seven months the Yangtze River was tracked with sophisticated equipment, including cameras and underwater microphones. But the once cheerful sounds of the talking dolphin were never heard. Nothing. The white dolphin had already left the world forever.

As it seemed pointless to return to China to try and find the Baiji, the new TV series instead turned its attention to the Blue Whale and visited the Sea of Cortez in Mexico for this Sunday's final episode.

However, in the first episode "Amazon Manatee", Mark and Stephen were able to spend time with the Amazon Pink River Dolphin or "Boto", and got some marvellous footage and photographs.

OHMYNews.com has a review of a new book entitled "Witness to Extinction: How We Failed to Save the Yangtze River Dolphin" by Samuel Turvey, a research fellow at the Zoological Society of London. Mark Carwardine describes the book as follows... "At last someone is publicly mourning the tragic extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin. This is a highly authoritative, well written, thought-provoking and timely book". The review itself includes this passage...

Turvey's elegiac twilight trawl between the Yangtze's soggy mud banks heavy with wet grass and tree skeletons consumes six sorry weeks of 2006.

After covering the middle section of the great river twice, he and his peers become increasingly despondent, resentful, almost mutinous, irked by funding problems and failure.

The book is also available as a Kindle edition, and also at Amazon.co.uk.

RedOrbit.com has an interesting article about the steps scientists must make in order to claim that a species has gone extinct. They use the Baiji Dolphin as a prime example.

scientists must undergo endless searching to prove that any individual species has gone the way of the dodo.

"If there's one thing in my career I'd like to be proved wrong about, it's the baiji," said Sam Turvey of the Zoological Society of London, using another name for the Yangtze River dolphin.

Turvey interviewed Chinese fishermen for almost 3 months earlier this year, hoping to record sightings of the long-snouted dolphin, which has not been seen since 2002. Some colleagues in China are still looking.

In 2006, the baiji was almost declared extinct after an acoustic and visual survey of the river turned up nothing. Yet a blurry video forced experts to rate it "possibly extinct."

The BBC Last Chance To See "Radio" page has been updated to include the second full radio episode "Gone Fishing!". This episode features Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine in their hunt for the Yangtze's Baiji Dolphin, which led to one of the most well loved passages in the original Last Chance To See book - the trip to the Shanghai Friendship Store. The BBC have pushed back the release of the Rodrigues Fruitbat radio episode, originally scheduled for today, until December.

The radio series episode guide in David Haddock's "The Story of Last Chance To See" has been updated with the link to all the audio released so far.

There's a fairly simplistic model of the Three Gorges Dam created by SugarSmax up on the Google 3D Warehouse. It can be downloaded into Google Sketchup or Google Earth and viewed from any angle, but it does give a nice idea of how the Chinese landscape has been modified by such a massive construction as this dam.

To aid in your Google Earth navigation, I still HEARTILY recommend the "3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator" from 3DConnexion. It's remarkably affordable, and brings the whole Google Earth experience to life. Lots of fun!

Try flying around the Last Chance To See locations which you'll find in our Another Chance To See KMZ file, and also the Jane Goodall Chimpanzee Google Earth blog which is a very clever use of Google Earth. The Space Navigator brings so much to the whole experience, and it's thoroughly addictive! The device is not just for Google Earth though. It also works with Google Sketchup, Autodesk products, and much more besides. I highly recommend it.

**REPOST TO TEST GOOGLE MAPS API-KEY PROBLEM**

On their visit to China to see the Baiji Dolphin, Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine visited Tiananmen Square in Beijing. They joined the queue to enter the mausoleum and filed past the body of Chairman Mao...

We joined the line after some hesitation, half-expecting that we might be there all day, but we were kept constantly on the move by the barking marshals, and even found that we were accelerating as we got closer to the front. Less than three hours after we had tagged on to the end of the line we were hurried into the red-pile-carpeted inner sanctum and ran past the tiny, plump, waxy body as respectfully as we could.

The queue which had been so tightly and rigorously controlled as it was lined up to be fed into the mausoleum, disintegrated amongst the souvenir stalls as it emerged from the other side. I imagined that from the air the building must resemble a giant mincing machine.

Thanks to Gwen, who pointed me in the direction of NPR's 3-part series on the impact of the Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam. Episode 1 details the concern over the rising waters in the reservoir, which are expected to reach their maximum height during 2008. There's an 8 minute audio download associated with the article.

Beijing has long touted the dam — the biggest hydroelectric plant in the world — as a way to stop flooding, increase river shipping and generate clean power.

But in September, officials publicly admitted that the project could lead to environmental disasters, prompting speculation that China's leaders wanted to distance themselves from the project.

See NPR: Concerns Rise with Water of Three Gorges Dam for more information.

Mongabay.com reports that Dr. Robert L. Pitman, a participant in last year's six week Baiji expedition, is skeptical that the creature filmed on the Yangtze was actually a Baiji.

The sighting near Tongling city in Anhui Province -- widely reported in Chinese and Western media -- was captured on video.

Dr. Robert L. Pitman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Ecosystem Studies Program told science writer Andrew Revkin of the New York Times that "Chinese scientists who have reviewed the supposed videotape are far from certain that it shows a baiji at all,"

Well here's a turn up for the books. It looks like the Baiji, a dolphin famed in legend as the "Goddess of the Yangtze", is not as dead as it was supposed to be. Here's the China Daily.com with the news - 'Extinct' dolphin spotted in Yangtze River.

A resident of east China's Anhui Province spotted a "big white animal" in the river on August 19, and filmed it with a digital camera, said Dr. Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The animal in the footage was confirmed by the institute to be a white-flag dolphin, known in Chinese as "baiji", Wang said.

"We are very glad to see baiji still exist in the world," Wang said.

Zeng Yujiang, the man who spotted the dolphin, told Xinhua, "I never saw such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it. It was about 1,000 meters away and jumped out of water for several times."

If we can find the video footage, we will of course post it as soon as possible - and if any kind readers see it, do let us know.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Professor Wang Ding, who headed the research team on the six-week Baiji Expedition, says that some of the dolphins may still exist.

"This is only one survey and...you can't have a sample in a survey, so you cannot say the baiji all is gone by the result of only one survey," he said.

"For example, there is some side channels or some tributaries [where] we cannot go because of a restriction of navigation rules, and also we don't survey during the night-time so we may miss some animals in the Yangtze River."

Professor Ding says based on anecdotal evidence, he remains confident the dolphins are still out there.

"I'm pretty much sure there are a few of them left somewhere in the Yangtze River," he said.

"I keep receiving reports from fishermen, they say they saw a couple of baiji somewhere, sometime.

News of the Baiji Dolphin's "extinction" is rolling around the media outlets again this week, as the researchers publish their 6-week study findings in the Royal Society Biology Letters. Here's BBC News with the story.

The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.

The team, writing in Biology Letters journal, blamed unregulated fishing as the main reason behind their demise.

If confirmed, it would be the first extinction of a large vertebrate for over 50 years.

The World Conservation Union's Red List of Threaten Species currently classifies the creature as "critically endangered".

The BBC site has a video report on this story, including footage of the Baiji in graceful action.

Also, here's an older report from earlier in the year...

Here's a few Three Gorges Dam videos from Youtube.

How utterly depressing that we had to lose such a beautiful creature as the Baiji Dolphin for the sake of a decimated landscape and a "tourist attraction". Bleh!

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.

The John Hopkins Newsletter has late coverage of the 100 endangered animals on the "Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered" (EDGE) list. The list, available at www.edgeofexistence.org was published last month by a team of scientists led by the Zoological Society of London.

Terms such as "threatened," "endangered" and "critically endangered" are used to describe increasingly dire situations for populations in the wild.

The EDGE list takes into account two additional factors that make the compilation unique.

First, the rankings give preference to species that are evolutionarily distinct, or the most biologically different from other living species. Although the loss of any species is a tragedy, the scientists at the EDGE project argue that some species are more unique than others.
[...]
The other criterion for EDGE species is the degree to which conservationists are already concerned with the animals. The researchers want conservationists to pay more attention to these underrepresented animals.

I just accidentally stumbled across this video segment on YouTube. As soon as it started playing I spotted the narrator immediately, and eventually realized that the audio was taken from the Last Chance To See audio book. The short film was made by YouTube user m3ttt.

"We are at the precipice of the end of the world!" says Chera Van Burg of Species Alliance.

CBS5.com of San Francisco has a detailed article and video report on the current theory that a new mass extinction is beginning. The report uses the Baiji Dolphin as a prime example. It also says that the Congo gorilla population has declined 90 percent since 2002, because of land clearance for Coltan mining, a mineral used in the manufacture of cell-phones.

There is widespread belief among scientists that current species of life are becoming extinct at a rate more than 1,000 times higher than normal.
[...]
"According to a consensus of the world's biologists, a mass extinction is unfolding or about to unfold on planet Earth," said David Ulansey of Massextinction.net.
[...]
Biologists believe the six major causes of the present mass extinction are habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, human overpopulation, human overconsumption, and climate change.

Full story and video report at CBS5.com.

A good article at China's Standard newspaper website last week. Three wildlife experts tell Steven Ribet of their experiences on the trail of two of China's most endangered animals, the Baiji Dolphin and finless porpoise. It includes a graphic description of the capture of QiQi, the only Baiji in captivity who died in 2002.

"The last confirmed sighting of a baiji in the wild was in May 2002. But we know there was at least one left alive after that because he died with us in captivity at our dolphinarium here in Wuhan," says Professor Wang.

"His name was Qiqi and we found him in 1980 when he was only two years old, 200 kilometers up the Yangtze from here in Chenglingji. He was stranded on the bank of the river. A fisherman had mistaken him for a fish and tried to catch him with a big hook, so there were two gaping holes in his neck. He was very close to death. None of us thought he was going to make it.

From the San Diego CityBEAT...

WAKE OF THE BAIJI at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla, 858-534-FISH. From 6:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24, Robert Pitman, of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, discusses the extinction risks of the Baiji, the Yangtze River dolphin, and the Gulf of California porpoise. RSVP by calling 858-534-4109.

MSNBC.com covers a new scientific initiative that was launched this week. The "EDGE" species plan aims to help save some of the world's most endangered animals from extinction. Although the Baiji Dolphin tops the initial list, I think it's probably a little too late for that particular cetacean.

With an initial list of 10 — including a venomous shrew-like creature, an egg-laying mammal and the world’s smallest bat — the program will give last ditch conservation aid where to date there has been little or none.

“We are focusing on EDGE species — that means they are Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered,” said Zoological Society of London scientist Jonathan Baillie.

Full story at MSNBC.com.

More information about the Edge Of Existence program can be found at www.edgeofexistence.org. It is an excellent site with some fabulous photographs and information.

The top of the list currently appears as follows...

1. Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer)
2. Long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bruijni)
3. Riverine rabbit (Bunolagus monticularis)
4. Cuban solenodon (Solenodon cubanus)
5. Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus)
6. Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)
7. Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)
8. Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus)
9. Northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii)
10. Sumatran rabbit (Nesolagus netscheri)
[...]
16. Aye-aye Lemur (Daubentonia madagascariensis)
[...]
84. Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis)

A science blog (with a monkey spin) comments on the extinction of the Baiji Dolphin in a post entitled Tales of Elusive Aquatic Creatures from December 2006.

Douglas Adams visited the polluted Yangtze River, the home of the Baiji, and discussed the species which was threatened not only by pollution, but due to hunting, fishing, collisions with boats, habitat loss, and severe depression. (Okay, I’m just guessing about that last one.) In Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams wrote, “The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong, is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.”

The blogger, Sheridan MacAuley, also comments on the video of the giant squid that was captured recently, as well as the theory that the Loch Ness Monster was a plesiosaur. It's a nice blog, and I'll be adding the RSS feed to my Google Reader as well as a link to my sidebar.

For those who haven't seen the video of the giant squid, here's one of the reports as posted on YouTube...