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The Extinction Thread (Imminent / Declared Extinctions)

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evilsprout

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Very sad. :(

Rare White Dolphin Declared As Extinct

By CHARLES HUTZLER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; 2:11 PM

BEIJING -- A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared Wednesday after ending a fruitless six-week search of its Yangtze River habitat.

The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.


For the baiji, the culprit was a degraded habitat _ busy ship traffic, which confounds the sonar the dolphin uses to find food, and overfishing and pollution in the Yangtze waters of eastern China, the expedition said.

"The baiji is functionally extinct. We might have missed one or two animals but it won't survive in the wild," said August Pfluger, a Swiss economist turned naturalist who helped put together the expedition. "We are all incredibly sad."

The baiji dates back 20 million years. Chinese called it the "goddess of the Yangtze." For China, its disappearance symbolizes how unbridled economic growth is changing the country's environment irreparably, some environmentalists say.

"It's a tremendously sad day when any species goes extinct. It becomes more of a public tragedy to lose a large, charismatic species like the river dolphin," said Chris Williams, manager of river basin conservation for the World Wildlife Fund in Washington.

"The loss of a large animal like a river dolphin is often a harbinger for what's going on in the larger system as whole. It's not only the loss of a beautiful animal but an indication that the way its habitat is being managed, the way we're interacting with the natural environment of the river is deeply flawed ... if a species like this can't survive."

Randall Reeves, chairman of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union's Cetacean Specialist Group, who took part in the Yangtze mission, said expedition participants were surprised at how quickly the dolphins disappeared.

"Some of us didn't want to believe that this would really happen, especially so quickly," he said. "This particular species is the only living representative of a whole family of mammals. This is the end of a whole branch of evolution."

The damage to the baiji's habitat is also affecting the Yangtze finless porpoise, whose numbers have fallen to below 400, the expedition found.

"The situation of the finless porpoise is just like that of the baiji 20 years ago," the group said in a statement citing Wang Ding, a Chinese hydrobiologist and co-leader of the expedition. "Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second baiji."

Pfluger said China's Agriculture Ministry, which approved the expedition, had hoped the baiji would be another panda, an animal brought back from the brink of extinction in a highly marketable effort that bolstered the country's image.

The expedition was the most professional and meticulous ever launched for the mammal, Pfluger said. The team of 30 scientists and crew from China, the United States and four other countries searched a 1,000-mile heavily trafficked stretch of the Yangtze, where the baiji once thrived.

The expedition's two boats, equipped with high-tech binoculars and underwater microphones, trailed each other an hour apart without radio contact so that a sighting by one vessel would not prejudice the other. When there was fog, he said, the boats waited for the mist to clear to make sure they took every opportunity to spot the mammal.


Around 400 baiji were believed to be living in the Yangtze in the early 1980s, when China was just launching the free-market reforms that have transformed its economy. The last full-fledged search, in 1997, yielded 13 confirmed sightings, and a fisherman claimed to have seen a baiji in 2004.

At least 20 to 25 baiji would now be needed to give the species a chance to survive, said Wang.

For Pfluger, the baiji's demise is a personal defeat. A member of the 1997 expedition, he recalls the excitement of seeing a baiji cavorting in the waters near Dongting Lake.

"It marked me," he said. He went on to set up the baiji.org Foundation to save the dolphin. In recent years, Pfluger said, scientists like the eminent zoologist George Schaller told him to stop his search, saying the baiji's "lost, forget it."

During the latest expedition, an online diary kept by team members traced a dispiriting situation, as day after day they failed to spot a single baiji.

Even in the expedition's final days, members believed they would find a specimen, trolling a "hotspot" below the industrial city of Wuhan where Baiji were previously sighted, Pfluger said.

"Hope dies last," he said.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00304.html
 
I remember reading about that dolphin in a newspaper 7 or 8 years ago. Never managed to get money donated to the cause sadly.
 
The trouble being they weren't cute and furry.... so didn't get the attention a tiger or panda gets... tell someone that something that would make a nice cuddly toy is about to become extinct and there is uproar! if it's a lizard or a blind dolphin... apathy rules... a sad state of affairs really!
 
Think how different this scenario would be if they were a delicacy....
 
I think plenty of species have died out exactly because they have been delicacies.

However a dolphin belongs among those cute animals that people love. I´m surprised it didn´t get more attention, even if it was a rather ugly dolphin.
 
Can you name any species that became extinct due to being hunted soley for food?

All dolphins are ugly.
 
Kondoru said:
What about pressure from introduced predators?
Click to expand...

Don't expect they help much, but its probably a wide variety of reasons...

... humans being at the top of the list...
 
Ill look that one up.

My nomination would be Stellers sea cow...by natives
 
What natives??

Apparently, they were led to extinction by a variety of people including sailors, seal hunters and fur traders...probably from the still expanding European empires. ALthough, it does say the population may have been dwindling already...

The population of sea cows was likely small when Steller first described the giant creatures. Some scientists think the entire population included fewer than 2,000 animals, all of which lived around Bering and Copper islands. This small population was wiped out quickly by the sailors, seal hunters, and fur traders that followed Vitus Bering's route past the islands to Alaska. These people killed the sea cows primarily for food and their skins, which were used to make boats. As a result of unlimited killing, the Steller's sea cow population declined sharply. In 1768, just 27 years after Steller first described the sea cow, the species became extinct. Today, the sea cow seems an almost imaginary creature, but Steller's descriptions and a few intact skeletons and pieces of skin, preserved in museums, prove that this amazing animal lived in the Bering Sea just over 200 years ago.
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Source: http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/scie ... rsity.html

But even the reduction in the food source (kelp) was reduced, probably because of the incuring human factor.
 
Sea cows of varying spiecie were found from Japan to California in prehistoric times.

`something` happened to them

It was Stellars hard luck to hit upon a relict population (though not an unviable one) if he realised this, they would been of great value to collectors.

whether or not their subsequent history would have been very differrent I dont know.
 
Well, I think there was a species of penguin that got extinct after too many sailors realised it made for a handy happy meal to take with you. I think it was on one of the capes. And then of course many animals are threathened because of their "medicinal value" in eastern medicine.
 
Given how intelligent dolphins are, I wonder how lonely the last one felt. It would be like if everyone else on earth died and you were just wandering around going "Hello?" without knowing there was no one there to respond.

They still have the freshwater dolphins in the amazon right? I'll just check wikipedia to see how they're do-

"Several damming projects of the kind that have devastated populations in Asia have been proposed for the region."

:shock:

They're pink. PINK! No pink animal deserves extinction.
 
I have to confess to crying when I read about the extinction of the baiji. It's bad enough that animals get wiped out that we don't even know about, but for a creature that we knew was endangered, and that we had a pretty good idea WHY it was becoming endangered...

...it's just appalling. As a species, we really need to get our act together and start realising that we're just a cog in a very large machine; just because we have opposable thumbs and the ability to communicate doesn't give us the right to ride roughshod over the world we live in and its other inhabitants.

Poor baiji. Iggore, your post about how it must have been for the very last one was heartbreaking. :(
 
Lets face it, cetean conservation is geared towards the commercialy viable.

not the merely interesting.

I read once that the baiji had a lopsided skull....why?

Ganges river dolphins have curious sleep patterns to allow them to live in turbulent waters.
 
Well, sounds like the chinese suck at teh environment. :v
 
Ah, well, they're cute and fluffy and make good PR, don't they? And improving their habitat doesn't involve affecting one of the busiest thoroughfares in the country (the Yangtze)...

Grrr.
 
It IS all very sad, but here's a question that made me think....if you could eradicate all forms of exinction, would you?
 
No, for that would mean there was no progress.

It would be playing into the hands of the creationists too
 
That's a very, very good question. I'd want to eradicate all extinctions that were caused, directly or indirectly, by humans, but maybe not the ones that would have happened naturally...but how do you find out which are which? And where do you draw the line?

I suppose I'm so upset by the fate of the baiji because it was known that it was endangered for ages, and that it was because of increasing traffic and pollution in its habitat, but nothing was done, and now it's too late. But you make a very good point, QuaziWashboard.
 
The way I see it, every extinction is caused by something. Whether it's one species of animal (including us humans) out-competing another, or desease, or whatever...so what makes us so different that we grieve for a species that has become extinct? Well it's the fact that we, as apposed to any other species, are aware of it happening, have the knowledge to do something about it, but fail to do so. It makes us feel guilty. But in reality, if we saved every endangered creature and restocked them to numbers that would make them momentarily safe from extincton, there just wouldn't be enough of the planet's resources to go around and could actualy spark off a global extinction due to starvation. Quite a lot of endangered species' natural habitats are also in danger, either due to ourselves or natural global change, so if you could save such an endangered species, where would you put them?
In other words, save one species, you give them an unnatural advantage over another species, and it'll probably be at the expence of a different species later and we'd be responsible for yet another extinction.
Extinction is a natural process, that we, as a species ourselves are inextricably part of, that must continue in order for evolution to work correctly and the only way we can ensure that we are not personaly responsible for any other extinctions is to take ourselves out of the equasion either by destroying the entire human race (which would just be another extinction) or to leave our planet to it's own natural devices and go and find a different planet to inhabit. Which isn't going to happen any time soon.
In the meantime, I'm afraid we just have to live with it. It's sad, but not as sad as it would be if we managed to save every endangered species on the planet and keep things just as they are so no other species becomes extinct because then we'd effectively be halting evolution which would mean the extinction of all future species to come before they even had a chance to get started.
Yes we shall mourne this particular species of dolphin, but remember, with it's leaving, it's probably made room for a different species to fill a niech, grow and evolve into something wonderfull that's never been seen before.


There, does everyone feel better now? :roll:
 
QuaziWashboard said:
Yes we shall mourne this particular species of dolphin, but remember, with it's leaving, it's probably made room for a different species to fill a niech, grow and evolve into something wonderfull that's never been seen before.


There, does everyone feel better now? :roll:
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No, because it's generally accepted that we are currently in a period of mass extinction (man made).

I very much doubt that anything 'wonderful' will replace this dolphin within humanity's remaining lifetime.
 
So this is assuming that somehow humans are `outside` natural events?

(as opposed to a big meteorite, for example....and what would happen if by some means a big stike was prevented by humans???)
 
rynner said:
QuaziWashboard said:
Yes we shall mourne this particular species of dolphin, but remember, with it's leaving, it's probably made room for a different species to fill a niech, grow and evolve into something wonderfull that's never been seen before.


There, does everyone feel better now? :roll:
Click to expand...
No, because it's generally accepted that we are currently in a period of mass extinction (man made).

I very much doubt that anything 'wonderful' will replace this dolphin within humanity's remaining lifetime.
Click to expand...

If there were more cats (or any other creature you want to imagine) than any other animal in the world, making them the most successful creature on the planet but in turn meaning that other species don't do as well and may even become extinct as a result of the cat's success, would you feel as much hatred for cats as you do for the human race?

It's probably already happened, with the dolphin gone something is bound to fill in the empty space left by it. Whether its microbial life or large vertibrate, something will have already homed in on the vacant habitat and will be taking full advantage of the dolphin's absence. As evolution is slow, you may be right, humankind may not survive long enough to see what evolves from this new nich becoming available, but some creature will gain an advantage with the dolphin's passing which will probably go on to evolve into something else eventualy. But whatever takes it's place, now or in the far future, it'll be alive, and seeing as how all living things are wonderful...it too will be 'wonderful'

I bet the fish in the river ain't complaining about the dolphin dying out! ;)
 
However, the human race does behave as though ecology no longer applies to us...In a situation that you describe, where there was an explosion in the cat population, then yes, they would make an awful dent in the numbers of their prey species, but before they could eat them all the cats would feel the effects of not having many left; the following season they wouldn't breed as successfully, there would be less of them, and the prey species would have a chance to recover. We, on the other hand, just keep reproducing and reproducing and destroying habitats left, right and centre in our search for housing and food. I can't believe the world is meant to become a concrete wasteland with the odd dusty starling and urban fox to represent wildlife.

Yes, we are animals on this planet, and yes, we are supposed to fit in somewhere. But it seems to me that we've lost the ability to do so, to a point where the extinctions we are causing are senseless, dangerous and nothing to do with balance any more.
 
We've done exactly what almost every other creature does, we've tried to shape our enviroment to suit ourselves by building shelter just like ants and beaver do. We've encouraged the growth of animals like cows and sheep that are an advantage to us (in this respect you could say that we're having a symbyotic relationship with them and have given them an unnatural advantage over other species, but creatures of different species quite often teamup to the general advantage of both species) and moved competition like other predators out of the way, just like wild lions do, and occasionaly, when we find a resource that seems to good to be true, we use it up until it's gone, which is somethin dolphins have been known to do with rare fish stocks.
 
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