White Dolphin Functionally Extict 868
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in nearly fifty years another mammal, specifically an aquatic mammal, has gone extinct. In this case, it was the white dolphin, also known as the Baiji, which used to live in the Yangtze River in China. The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."
Re:White Dolphin "Functionally" Extinct?! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oops! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ironic Article Timing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Captivity? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Endgame (Score:1, Informative)
Re:White Dolphin "Functionally" Extinct?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cataloguing DNA for future use (Score:5, Informative)
Their mission is to "The ALL Species Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the complete inventory of all species of life on Earth within the next 25 years - a human generation."
A Wired article http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50942
Re:Oops! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oops! (Score:5, Informative)
From their website [baiji.org]:
(Emphasis mine.)
Here is some information [eawag.ch] on the staff at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.
Not to discount your source, but I'd hope that they have a bit more knowledge about the issue than your associate professor.
And please, /.ers, stop knee-jerking. That's not what geeks do.
Douglas Adams wrote about the baiji dolphin (Score:5, Informative)
The late Douglas Adams (along with Mark Carwardine) wrote a book titled Last Chance to See about a number of animals on the brink of extinction. The chapter Blind Panic was all about the baiji dolphin's predicament. Practically blind, the baiji dolphin relied sonar to navigate the Yangtze river - the trouble is that the Yangtze is really busy and hence noisy and polluted. The baiji didn't stand a chance, though from the book it seemed that the Chinese did put a lot of effort into trying to save them.
Scott
Re:Top Of the Food Chain, Ma! (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it's not like we've killed off so many species that scientists refer to the modern era as the Holocene Extinction Event [wikipedia.org], or the Sixth Extinction [actionbioscience.org]; or are claiming that this is the fastest mass extinction in Earth's history [amnh.org], giant meteors included. No, there's hardly any extinction going on.
Please perform at least a cursory Google search [google.com] before making broad scientific claims.
Re:How are your nice morality-safe leather shoes? (Score:3, Informative)
See, historically it's been hunters that have been the first to move to protect habitats and watersheds essential to wildlife. They see firsthand the consequences when these are lost. You can call it enlightened self interest, but it's really more than that. It's a drive to preserve the legacy of the outdoors, to keep things pristine and healthy for future generations to enjoy. That's the very thing that moved Teddy Roosevelt (and avid hunter and sportsman) to create the National Parks system.
Besides that, the whole ethos of skilled hunting isn't about achieving the kill. It is about respecting the animals one takes. That's a lot more than can be said about a minimum-wage slaughterhouse worker whacking cattle on the abattoir.