[1003] Of extinction of Chinese River Dolphin

A large mammal species, the Chinese River Dolphin has been presumed extincted after a recent international expedition failed to find one in the Yangtze River:

Wuhan, 13 December 2006 — The Baiji Yangtze Dolphin is with all probability extinct. On Wednesday, in the city of Wuhan in central China, a search expedition, under the direction of the Institute for Hydrobiology Wuhan and the Swiss-based baiji.org Foundation, drew to a finish without any results. During the six-week expedition scientists from six nations desperately searched the Yangtze in vain.

The Yangtze is also the location of the Three Gorges Dam.

According to the National Geographic Society, this is the first extinction of large mammal in recent decades:

If Pfluger’s team is correct, the baiji will be the first large aquatic mammal to have gone extinct since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.

This is truly a sad week.

We, Malaysians have our own river dolphin, the Fraser’s Dolphin, also known as the Sarawak Dolphin. Let not push them to extinction as the Chinese had done with theirs.