End of Baiji - The Chinese River Dolphin

Baiji or the Yangtze River Dolphin, nicknamed the Goddess of the Yangtze was announced as functionally extinct on December 13 2006, making it the first aquatic mammal to be extinct since the 1950s when Caribbean Monk Seal and the Japanese Sea Lion was announced as extinct. The Baiji is a uniquely shaped river dolphin, with a bottlenose-like shaped snout and Dugong-like shaped body, mature males reach an average length of just over 2 meters and females reach over 2.5 meters. The Baiji has an average lifespan of just over 20 years out in the wild and weighs over 150-200 kilograms in its adult stages.

Baiji the river dolphin was largely located around the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze, where a substantial number (of about 10% of the world’s population) works and lives, putting a considerable amount of pressure, risks and dangers to the Baiji habitat and in the later stages, man-made constructions like the Three Gorges Dam, and other projects, placed more stress on the habitat, the Baiji had considerably lesser amount of space to roam about, causing further habitat loss.

Initial numbers of the Baiji was estimated at about 6000, in the early 1950s. However, due to several threats that came throughout the decades, the Baiji habitat reduced tremendously in just mere decades and in the 1980s, just three decades later, there were only 400 known Baiji out living in the wild. The Guinness Book of World Records labeled the Baiji as the world’s most endangered cetacean when only 13 were sighted after a mass search was conducted in 1997, and was quickly put in the Endangered Species list by the United States government’s Endangered Species Act.

Most of the loss of the habitat could be traced back to human-related causes. During the period of the Great Leap Forward, when the Baiji, which was previously looked upon with much respect and reached a certain level of veneration amongst locals, lost the veneration and were quickly and en masse hunted down by locals for its skin and flesh. Due to the large population of people living along the Yangtze River, population of Baiji quickly dwindled and within years, a Baiji sighting became scarce. Over the years, as China progressed into an industrialized nation, the dolphin faced even more pressure, this time in the face of toxic waste and pollution. Trade increased in China and ship traffic increased tremendously, causing even more accidental deaths of the Baiji, which was known for its terrible eyesight and hearing.

Under much pressure from various communities and organizations worldwide who wanted to know the fate of the river dolphins, the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin Expedition was carried out between November-December 2006 by the Ministry of Agriculture of China and had experts from Japan, United States and Switzerland. Over 10,000 kilometers of Yangtze River and through to the Three Gorges Dam were travelled on research vessels. However, even though researchers were faced with poor weather conditions and terrible water visibility, not a single Baiji was detected and by 2006, the expedition leaders were left with no choice but to declare the Baiji functionally extinct, a termed used when even though a reduced population could be found, it plays an insignificant role in the ecosystem function and reproduction is not a possibility.

Even though a Baiji was located and captured on camera in August 2007, and experts confirmed the creature captured on camera was that of a Baiji, it is still believed that only a single-digit population of Baiji remains that is of advanced age and no longer viable of reproduction. Though the Baiji the river dolphin has been declared functionally extinct, it is important for us and for future generations to put in extra effort to conserve threatened species and learn that pollution, however insignificant it may be to an individual, is hugely destructive. Even though 13 December 2006 was a dark day for the Baiji and the aquatic world, we must not allow an extinction of a species due to human aggression and oversight.