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Baiji River Dolphin May or May Not Be Extinct
Journal written by ozmanjusri (601766) and posted by
Zonk
on Sat Aug 11, 2007 11:31 PM
from the they-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
from the they-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
ozmanjusri writes "Major news outlets are reporting that after 20 million years, Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) are now officially extinct. This is apparently actually old news; it was announced on a Baiji conservation website in December of last year. One outlet, though, is claiming they may not quite be completely dead yet. The same scientist that filed the report leading the the declaration of extinction is still hopeful: '"This is only one survey and...you can't have a sample in a survey, so you cannot say the baiji all is gone by the result of only one survey," he said. "For example, there is some side channels or some tributaries [where] we cannot go because of a restriction of navigation rules, and also we don't survey during the night-time so we may miss some animals in the Yangtze River." Professor Ding says based on anecdotal evidence, he remains confident the dolphins are still out there. "I'm pretty much sure there are a few of them left somewhere in the Yangtze River," he said. "I keep receiving reports from fishermen, they say they saw a couple of baiji somewhere, sometime."'"
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You Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
This is apparently actually old news; it was announced on a Baiji conservation website in December of last year.
I'll do you one better than that, it was apparently reported on fucking Slashdot too [slashdot.org].
Seriously, what is wrong with you people? Are you purposely making fun of yourselves? Because to those of us who aren't in on the joke, which is most of us I guess, it looks like the site is run by a bunch of fucking dumbasses.
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Yeah, but we keep coming back. Who is more the fool
Re:You Idiots (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
A tautology! (Score:3, Funny)
i read somewhere (Score:2, Insightful)
please, please, please someone tell me the chinese have some of those tissue samples in liquid nitrogen. given some technological progress then, we might be able to bring the baiji back to life in a century or so
otherwise, the chinese deserve international sanctions for losing some of our shared world species diversity. it should be a un mandate with economic consequence
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Note to parent poster: Death by natural causes is different from death by human intervention. The same goes for collective deaths, A.K.A. extinction.
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Well shit, that's a great reason to get all worked up about it.
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I'm by no means a greasy-haired wild-eyed foaming-at-the-mouth green-nazi hippie douchebag, pretty nearly the opposite in fact, and I certainly don't buy into the "stewards of the planet
Re:yes, education is needed (Score:5, Informative)
Hi. Chinese guy here. And yeah, you are being patronizing.
It's true that the baiji are somewhat significant in Chinese culture, but to the point you seem to think it is. Personally nobody I knew ever thought about them, or indeed were aware of them outside of field trips to some science museum. The whole "ancestors placed importance in baiji" and "Chinese venerate ancestors" is just one big non-sequitor I'm not even going to touch.
Keep in mind that the significance of the river dolphins was limited to an isolated geographical region, where the vast majority of Chinese did *not* reside. Maybe there are people living on the banks of the yangtze mourning their loss, but for the other 99.99% of Chinese people out there, things haven't changed a bit.
Now... Regarding your previous comment. While it's certainly unfortunate and sad that the baiji have been killed off due to human actions, in the end who is responsible? Want to dig Mao out of the ground and put him on trial for instituting the Great Leap Forward that encouraged such reckless killings? Good luck with that. In the end, commercial fisheries, massively increased boat traffic, and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam were primary contributors to the extinction of these dolphins. IMHO all of these have been critical to raising the standard of living and quality of life for the Chinese people. I wish we could have both (human prosperity and ecological conservation), and perhaps we could have under more effective leadership or more resources, but those were the cards we were dealt.
What would a serious conservation effort require to preserve these creatures? Stop using the Yangtze as an industry shipping lane? Spew even more toxic gases into the atmosphere by constructing the huge number of fuel-burning power plants that the Three Gorges Dam could replace? Stop fishing the Yangtze and deny a critical food source for the local population? I hate to be so human-ist about everything, but between the survival of humans the the survival of a bunch of dolphins, it's pretty clear which I pick.
So now the baiji are (probably) all dead. What did we receive out of that deal? Millions of Chinese are now far more prosperous than they were before. Remote regions are no longer starving, and many now have access to proper food, shelter, and medicine. The situation in China, especially the rural areas, is not pretty, but for the most part it's a lot better than it was before.
Parent
straw man (Score:3, Interesting)
you seem to say that economic development, the three gorges damn, etc.: it required the dolphin go extinct. really? so china can exert great effort to build a damn, but not the tiniest of effort to save a dolphin?
fact is, it is now the eternal shame of the chinese for killing this creature. not according to this westerner. don't ask me, ask your grandchildren
they won't mind at all that your poor choices means the
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Tomorrow's headline... (Score:2, Insightful)
Walruses may or may not be extinct!
Jellyfish may or may not be extinct!
The common house cat may or may not be extinct!
Triceratops may or may not be extinct!
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They're dead. (Score:2, Funny)
I thought it was a cat? (Score:5, Funny)
May or May not? (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for telling me (Score:5, Funny)
Miracle Max (Score:4, Insightful)
In all seriousness, with so few members of the species, they're effectively extinct, and that's what counts. There may be one or two, but there's zero chance they'll balloon into a viable population. Even if we save genetic samples, we're decades, if not centuries, away from being able to reproduce an entire species, if we can even do that. Even if we have tissue samples from twenty different dolphins, and reproduce them through some hypothetical cloning technique, I'm not convinced that's enough genetic diversity to sustain the species.
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Further, the species is adapted to a particular ecological niche - in this case, the Yangtse River.
Further, particularly in mammals, there are learned behaviors that
Only a matter of time (Score:4, Informative)
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