CAMPAIGN for the ABOLITION of

Yangtze river dolphin; Declared extinct 2007; The dolphin that man could not live alongside.

The Yangtze river dolphin is declared extinct. It is the first large animal to be wiped from the planet for 50 years, and only the fourth entire mammal family to disappear in 500 years. And it was driven to its death by mankind... By Jeremy Laurance Published: 08 August 2007

After more than 20 million years on the planet, the Yangtze river dolphin is today officially declared extinct, the first species of cetacean (whale, dolphin or porpoise) to be driven from this planet by human activity.

An intensive six-week search by an international team of marine biologists involving two boats that ploughed up and down the world's busiest river last December failed to find a single specimen.

Today, the scientific report of that expedition, published in the peer-reviewed journal of the Royal Society, Biology Letters, confirms the dolphin known as the baiji or white-fin in Chinese and celebrated for its pale skin and distinctive long snout, has disappeared.

To blame for its demise is the increasing number of container ships that use the Yangtze, as well as the fishermen whose nets became an inadvertent hazard.

This is no ordinary extinction of the kind that occurs frequently in a world of millions of still-evolving species. The Yangtze freshwater dolphin was a remarkable creature that separated from all other species so many millions of years ago, and had become so distinct, that it qualified as a mammal family in its own right. It is the first large vertebrate to have become extinct for 50 years and only the fourth entire mammal family to disappear since the time of Columbus, when Europeans began their colonisation of the world.

The three previous mammal families gone from the face of the Earth are the giant lemurs of Madagascar, which were eliminated in the 17th century, the island shrews of the West Indies, probably wiped out by the rats that accompanied Colombus on his voyage, and the Tasmanian tiger, the last known specimen of which died in captivity in 1936. (The most famous creature to have become extinct in the past 500 years, the Dodo, was a bird.)

Sam Turvey, conservation biologist at the Zoological Society of London, who led the expedition to find the Yangtze dolphin and is chief author of the paper, said: "The loss of such a unique and charismatic species is a shocking tragedy. This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet."

Several other species are "just hanging on" in the Yangtze and could disappear within a few years unless action is taken now, Dr Turvey warned. They include the Chinese alligator, the finless porpoise and the Chinese paddlefish, which grows up to 7m long but has not been seen since 2003.

"There is a lot of interest now in the baiji - but it has come too late. Why does no one pay attention to a species until there are none left? We really have to use the baiji as a wake-up call to act immediately to prevent it happening again.

"What is poignant is that the Yangtze is a fast river system with a unique range of endemic species. Once they are lost there, they are lost everywhere," he said.

The object of last December's expedition was to rescue any baiji found and remove them to a 21km-long oxbow lake in the nature reserve of Tian'ezhou for an intensive breeding programme. Each of the two boats operated independently with scientists scanning the water with binoculars - dolphins have to surface to breathe - and listening with hyprophones for the distinctive whistles. Despite the technology, they found nothing.

"We used a very intensive survey technique. Both of the boats counted the same number of porpoises - we saw everything that was there. We didn't see a single dolphin," Dr Turvey said.

The cause of the freshwater dolphin's demise was instead all too plain to the investigators. It had become a victim of the world's most populous country's race to get richer. One tenth of the world's population live in the Yangtze river basin. During the expedition, scientists counted 19,830 ships on the 1,669km of the river they surveyed - one large freight vessel every 800m.

The Yangtze dolphin navigated by sonar - its eyes are useless in the murky water - but in a motorway jammed with container ships, coal barges and speed boats, its sonar was deafened and it ran a high risk of being hit or torn by propellers.

An even greater threat came from the nets and 1,000m lines of hooks used by fishermen.

Although they did not intend to catch dolphins, the creatures became entangled in the nets or lacerated by the bare hooks - almost half of all dead baiji found in the past few decades have died in this way. In addition, pollution had fouled their natural habitat and completion of the Three Gorges Dam worsened the decline in smaller fish on which the baiji fed.

The last mammal families to become extinct

Island shrews
Extinct: 1500
The West Indian "island shrews" or nesophontids are known only from sub-fossil remains. They were about the size of a rat and died out following the accidental introduction of black rats, with which they could not compete, from European ships. They were the most ancient land mammals of the West Indies and their extinction represented the loss of an entire mammalian order.

Giant lemurs
Extinct: 1650
The giant lemurs of Madagascar weighed up to 180lb, more than a silverback gorilla. They died out as a result of hunting by humans.

Tasmanian Tiger
Extinct: 1936
The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, left, looked like a large striped dog, with a wolf's head and heavy tail. It was actually a marsupial, related to the kangaroo, with a pouch to raise its young. European settlers feared it and killed it whenever they could. Thylacines never bred in captivity - the last known one dying in Hobart zoo on 7 September 1936.

From: http://environment.independent.co.uk/wildlife/article2843953.ece

I do not see why the very existence of an invisibile world may not in part depend on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal....I do not know what the sweat and blood tradegy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all aour idealities and faithfullnesses, are needed to redeem...The deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses and our unwillingnesses, our faiths and our fears...In these crepuscular depths of personality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise. Here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature of things; and compared with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract statements and scientific arguments...sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth.

These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief with help create the fact. The 'scientific' proof that you are right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or some stage of being which that expression may serve to symbolise) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been gained: 'Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques, and you were not there!'
from "The Will to Believe"

William James

THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF ANIMAL RIGHTS

Insomuch as there is ample evidence that many animal species are capable of feeling, we condemn totally the infliction of suffering upon our fellow creature and the curtailment of their behavioural and other needs save where this is necessary for their own individual benefit.

We do not accept that a difference in species alone (any more than a difference in race) can justify wanton exploitation or oppression in the name of science or sport, or for use as food, for commercial profit or for other human gain.

We believe in evolutionary and moral kinship of all animals and declare our belief that all sentient creatures have rights to life, liberty and natural enjoyment.

We therefore call for the protection of these rights.

Sign the Declaration

COLOURLESS DAYS

A blackbird came to the garden,
Near the honeysuckle
Where the paving slabs are spread
With crumbs - and seeds - and other morsels;
A robin joined him there
And not a word was said
On colour, creed
Nor even inclination.
No word of 'being black'
Or tinged with 'red'.
Their forms, the emblems of their species -
Are an evolution common to us all.
So when the air is humid
Or thick with unreason,
Stop and listen to the message
The robin
And the blackbird
Call.

Carole Parsons

The World's Need

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

So many gods
So many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind
While just the art of being kind
is all this sad world needs.

I am the voice of the voiceless
Through me the mute shall speak
'til the deaf world's ear
be made to hear
the cry of the wordless weak.

From lab, from cage, from kennel,
from slaughterhouses, comes the wail
of my tortured kin
who proclaim the sin
of the mighty against the frail.

For love is the true religion
And love is the law sublime
And all that is wrought
where love is not
will die with the touch of time.

Oh, shame on the mothers of mortals
Who have not stopped to teach
of the sorrow that lies
in an animal's eyes;
the sorrow that has no speech.

The same power formed the sparrow
that fashioned man; the king
The god of the whole
gave a living soul
to furred and to feathered thing.

And I am my brother's keeper
And I will fight his fight
and speak the word
for beast and bird
til the world shall set things right.

Amen to all those that have suffered at the hands of humans