A year, month, and nine days after we mentioned the Chinese River Dolphin was near extinction we can remove the word "near" with much certainty. Although scientists haven't found any animals during a six-week study they feel 50 may still exist in the river but likely to bear the title "officially extinct" by 2016.Wikipedia paints an even darker picture. They report 50 dolphins being counted in 1997 and only 8 in 1998. As of December 13th scientists are calling Lipotes vexillifer functionality extinct. This would be the first cetacean species to (unequivocally) die-out 27 years after declared as endangered.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
1. Having been to China a couple times, I would guess this is probably due to pollution more than the traffic issue. They say in the study that they didn't find "high" levels of toxic substances. This to me sounds like someone didn't want people getting spooked by how bad the Yangtze river is. While drinking it might not kill you right off, drinking it everyday probably would. So, living in it is really bad.
The Chinese are working like crazy to get themselves industrialized. America and Europe were pretty similar in their industrial revolutions. We are just more aware of the environmental impacts now. While I loved it there, and there are tons of wonderful natural areas, the people are really beating the place up. Can't say I blame them, because there are a ton of really poor people absolutely scratching out a living there. The people gotta eat. I just hope they get to the point where they start caring about pollution soon.
Posted at 8:45PM on Dec 17th 2006 by The Tick