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solonavi 30 August 2007 Endangered & Extinction 182 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

A good news on the Baiji Dolphin.

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BBC

The critically endangered Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, has been sighted in eastern China, Chinese media report.

Scientists had recently declared that the baiji was probably extinct.

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But earlier this month the baiji was spotted and filmed by a local man, and confirmed by Chinese biologists, says official Xinhua news agency.

“I never saw such a big thing in the water before so I filmed it,” Zeng Yujiang from Anhui Province told Xinhua.

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Wang Kexiong from the Institute of Hydrobiology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said experts from the institute had confirmed the footage was of a baiji.

Wang Ding, also from the Institute of Hydrobiology and a leading authority on the species, said that the sighting could not be confirmed 100% because of the distance, but that it looked and acted like a baiji.

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Although the sighting provides a small cause for hope that the creature could survive in the wild, the outlook is not good, says the BBC’s East Asia editor Steve Jackson.

In the 1950s there were thousands of Yangtze River dolphins, but numbers have declined drastically due to industrial pollution, heavy river traffic and over-fishing.

A survey by researchers in 1997 found only 13.

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The last previous sighting of a wild baiji was in 2004, while the last captive baiji, Qi Qi, died in 2002.