Allowing a beautiful large mammal that has evolved over millions of years to disappear forever,  is a monumental failure of human civilisation. Yet the extinction of the baiji dolphin of the Yangtze river is no longer on people’s radar screens. Why do we need to keep the story alive? How do we ensure the same fate doesn’t befall the other river dolphins of the Amazon, the Ganges and the Indus? What failures of conservation can we simply not allow to happen?

Though it has been a couple of years since the baiji dolphin of the Yangtze river in China has been declared “most likely” extinct – it was in 2007 when the announcement was made – why is it important for us not to let this unfortunate and unforgivable event fade out of human memory and consciousness?

Samuel Turvey , the conservation biologist who currently works for the Zoological Society of London, was deeply involved in the final stages of the project to save the baiji dolphin. His book, “Witness to Extinction: How we failed to save the Yangtze River Dolphin” takes a poignant and angry look at the series of lost chances that led a beautiful cetacean, one that has evolved over 20 million years to vanish forever from the face of this world in the blink of a planetary eye.

What is the baiji?

The baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) is a native of the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze which stretches over 6,300km from the Tibetan plateau to the East China Sea. The river boasts of rich biological diversity and endemic species such as the baiji. The baiji is one of 4 river dolphin species of the world, the others being the Amazon dolphin, the Ganges and Indus dolphin, and the La Plata dolphin (which live off the coasts of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina in South America)

The baiji as a river dolphin is different in structure and appearance, to marine dolphins which look more streamlined. River dolphins have long thin beaks (about 30 cms and 4 times longer than marine dolphins), hump like dorsal fins and flexible necks. Their vision is poorly developed due to the muddy waters, which is compensated for by a heightened sonar sense – hence they move around and catch fish by echolocation. They often swim on their sides and feel the river bottom with flippers.

Why did the baiji disappear?

The oft assumed reason for the disappearance of the baiji is the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydro-electric power station in the world displacing over a million people along its 600 km long reservoir.

2000 years of relentless hunting had reduced the species to a rather precarious position in the 21st century. Though considered sacred in folklore, the baiji in reality was accorded no such status – being overfished for fat to produce oil for lamps, meat and traditional remedies for ailments.

Massive overpopulation along the Yangtze meant that everything was being removed from the river like a sieve. As early as the 1920s, Clifford Pope observed of Dongting (along the Yangtze)

“there are thousands of fishermen actually straining creatures of all sizes from the rapidly vanishing lake, and it seemed that the dolphin must soon fall victim to one of their innumerable methods of separating the water from everything in it but the mud.”

Pg 30 Witness to Extinction: How we failed to save the Yangtze River Dolphin

Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” in the 1950s transformed China’s agrarian economy into an industrial juggernaut overnight with devastating consequences for the natural environment – which according to Mao had to be “tamed into submission” by the plunder of forests for charcoal, and the construction of “large’ hydroelectrical projects to conquer rivers.

The massive scale of the Three Gorges project, the industrial activity and accompanying pollution of the Yangtze proved to be the last straw. Many riverine creatures on the Yangtze were killed during construction. It also prevented fish from moving into spawning gounds.

In 1988 there were about 200 baiji, a guesstimate at best given the various inconsistencies and challenges in the methods used to survey baijis over the 60s and 70s. The Three Gorges Dam increased the the quantum of ship traffic manifold. When Douglas Adams who wrote “Last Chance to See” lowered the microphone into the Yangtze he observed:

“ The sound we heard wasn’t exactly what I expected. Water is a very good medium for the propogation of sound and I had expected to hear clearly the heavy, pounding reverberations of each of the boats that had gone thundering by us as we stood on the deck. But water transmits sound even better than that, and what we were hearing was everything that was happening in the Yangtze for many, many miles around, jumbled cacophony together. Instead of hearing the roar of each individual ship’s propeller, what we heard was a sustained shrieking blast of pure white noise, in which nothing could be distinguished at all.”

Pg 34 Witness to Extinction: How we failed to save the Yangtze River Dolphin

For a near blind creature such as the baiji that relies heavily on the sense of sound for prey and survival, this pure white noise would be deadly indeed.  Coming up to the surface, the baiji would often get disembowelled on propellers of boats. A third of the baiji found dead in the 1980s may have been killed this way.

Conservation efforts for the Baiji?

Recovery chances for endangered species though faint are by no means impossible. Stellar examples that go down in conservation history are the recovery through intense efforts – of the Mauritius Kestrel, the Chatham Island black robin, the kakapo – the world’s largest parrot in New Zealand.

When it came to the baiji, the level of determination required to save a highly endangered species was found to be really wanting. The Chinese government was in favour of ex-situ or off site conservation (by capturing the baiji and letting them breed in a reserve), while most Western conservationists felt the long term chances of survival would be better only if the natural habitat of the baiji, namely the condition of the Yangtze river was improved – something that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

Turvey dwells upon the lip service and “slow pace of decision making” by both the Chinese Government and western conservationists which only tantamounted to shocking apathy. As Turvey indignantly points out, “ Just because you don’t feel that maintaining a viable population in a large protected oxbow (lake) is the ideal conservation solution, can you really then walk away and condemn the species to extinction, knowing that there’s no other option?

And yet, it would seem that the world did walk away. The reluctance to save the dolphin was evident in the sheer challenge of raising funds for the survey of the Yangtze river (the last one was done in the nineties showing rapid decrease in baiji numbers to about 13 animals), let alone funds for baiji conservation.

If Samuel Turvey and colleague Leigh Barrett hadn’t taken it upon themselves, giving it all their time and effort, literally scraping donors’ doors with begging bowls, even the survey would not have come through. The survey was the last chance for the baiji to study baiji numbers and initiate action to move any spotted dolphins to a reserve – the Tian-e-Zhou lake, the ox-bow lake 21km long.

The irony was that a million or so dollars required for baiji conservation wasn’t huge in the conservation world, considering tons of money were being poured into projects for less endangered species. US $190 million has been spent, for example on the research programme for the Stellar sea lion, which despite a serious decline in numbers off western Alaska, still has healthy populations along Alaska’s southeast coast.

The following video mentions the last surviving baiji dolphin, Qi-Qi (pronounced chee- chee) at Wuhan dolphinarium. Qi-Qi was studied by The Baiji Research Group which was headed by Wang Ding. Qi-Qi died at the age of 24 or 25 years (equivalent to a 70 year man) in 2002 after 22 years in captivity of old age and diabetes and had a funeral broadcast on national television.

Surveying the Yangtze river

When things eventually fell into place, Turvey’s team set off in two boats at the end of October 2006 for a six week journey upstream from Wuhan till Honghu and Yichang and back downstream to cover the range of the baiji.

Baiji Survey Area: Click on map for larger image

The picture that Turvey paints of the Yangtze river is gloomy, to say the least.  The haze of pollution from belching smokestacks and the economic activity supporting the mass of population along the banks – factories, oil refineries and chemical plants, along with the millions of tons raw sewage plants and industrial effluents that found its way into the river had taken a huge toll.  The Yangtze had also become a motorway for thousands of freighters to enable this relentless economic engine to chug along. It was also quite evident that there was no enforcement of illegal fishing practices such as the use of rolling hook lines.

The reader is left to wonder, who’s bearing the real cost of China becoming the world’s factory? And of consumerism within China itself which has been quick to explode in the pursuit of relentless growth?

Declaring extinction

As the lead author of the report following the Yangtze survey, Turvey announced that it was a “shocking tragedy” that not a single baiji was spotted during the dreary 45 day trip.  He describes how he had to juggle over semantics choosing to say the species is now “most likely” to be extinct, over what the Chinese felt was too strong in saying it was “probably” extinct.

But did it mean the baiji was really extinct? As quoted by the BBC “While it is conceivable that a couple of surviving individuals were missed by the survey teams, our inability to detect any baiji despite this intensive search effort indicates that the prospect of finding and translocating them to a [reserve] has all but vanished.”

As it so happened a baiji was spotted in 2007 but the likelihood of successful capture and breeding would really be next to impossible.

Collective memory of species extinction

In 2008, Turvey returned to interview the fishing communities along the Yangtze. To his surprise and consternation, “younger fishermen from the same communities had not only never seen baiji or paddlefish, but had never even heard of them.” His study called, “Rapidly Shifting Baselines in Yangtze Fishing Communities and Local Memory of Extinct Species” in Conservation Biology showed that extinct animals are surprisingly forgotten quickly.

It would seem that this loss of local cultural memory has spilled over to mainstream media as well, where the baiji is hardly ever mentioned anymore. We can’t let this collective memory loss happen, if we have to keep our hopes of saving the thousands of species at the brink of never coming back.

The fate of the river dolphins is symptomatic of the freshwater crisis facing the Asian river systems – which are collapsing due to climate change, population pressures and industrial development. The larger issue of how we protect and restore the river waters of Asia will hold the key to the fate of many endangered species.

If you’re looking for a message of hope in the book – there isn’t one.  ”Someday it will all be over,”  are Turvey’s final words.  And they come as a shock.

Protecting a unique, endangered species is the moral responsibility of the world. If at all there is something that Turvey teaches us, it is this: the effort and energy shown by a few individuals like him can make a difference, if done in good time. It was too late for the baiji, but maybe,  just maybe, there is a tiny window of opportunity for the other river dolphins of the world.

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT:  So Just What Is Shark Fin Soup?
EWTT:  The Waters of The Third Pole : Water Crisis in Asia

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Indonesia, which has one of the last great rainforests, and about 17,000 islands is one of the key areas where wildlife such as parrots, pangolins, orangutans and tigers are exported or killed. India is another major supplier, with animal parts or bones of elephants, rhinos and tigers being smuggled out. Thailand was once a major supplier, but with dwindling wildlife, it has become a lucrative transit centre, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Laos and Vietnam. Often the illegal animal trade accompanies the narcotics and arms trade, and the trafficking of people.

China, a giant vacuum cleaner?

Amongst Asian countries, China is the largest consumer of ivory, swallowing fifteen tons a year (which is about 1500 dead elephants). China takes in more than half of the 10,000 tons of freshwater turtles traded annually, along with being the biggest market for tiger bone, leopard cat, rhino horn, and sea horse. In fact, one conservationist in Cambodia likened the Chinese market to “a giant vacuum cleaner sucking out all the animals” in his own and neighbouring countries.

There is a tremendous demand for wildlife from cultural reasons. Body parts of wild animals like tiger bones and rhino horns are widely used for Chinese traditional medicine. Shark fin and blood from live snakes are seen as powerful aphrodisiacs.  Ivory and rhino horn are smuggled in large quantities from India and Africa for artefacts and traditional Chinese medicine.

Where else does the wildlife go?

It’s not China alone which sucks in all the wildlife. Bush meat or the commercial killing of wild animals for food is widespread in Africa and in other parts of Asia. Much of the trade in exotic birds, fish and reptiles, from live animal and bird markets in Burma, Thailand and Indonesia end up in Europe and America in the hands of rich pet collectors.

The US is the biggest buyer of exotic pets. Nearly 7 million households own a pet bird, a further 4 million own a pet snake, turtle, or iguana.

Japan is a major purchaser of ivory. Taiwan and Korea also acquire wild animals or products from the region.

The challenge

All the South EastAsian countries(excepting Laos) have signed the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna which produces the Red List of Endangered Species every three to four years), but smuggling is still rampant.

Habitat destruction, due to growing population, deforestation, desertification, urban development, damming for agriculture contributes to reduction of wildlife populations.

The challenge to protect wildlife against illegal trafficking is huge. Developing countries are too poor to keep environment and wildlife on their priority list, their focus being taken away by human issues such as poverty, health, terrorism and education. Funding for wildlife protection is minimal. Poor villagers assist in catching wildlife as a means to supplement their meagre income.

On the contrary, the organised traffickers who kill or capture wildlife with brazen disregard, have well connected, influential and deep pockets, making the task of curbing the trade even more challenging. Even in developed countries, the wildlife trade is hardly a priority for the Police, whose focus is on fighting drugs, theft and anti-social behaviour.

Is there hope?

However blood-curdling the images in Ben Davies’ book are, we have to thank him for bringing them to our attention and raising our awareness of this nefarious global trade. The devastation caused to wildlife species and populations is mind- boggling. Equally mind-boggling is the extreme cruelty to animals which is painful to comprehend. It leads me to wonder, how we as humans have become so numb, so insensitive to the pain and suffering of fellow creatures.

As Jane Goodall says in the introduction of the book, “It is my firm belief that an understanding of animals as individuals can pay an important role in shaping the way people think about wildlife. For it is not only the threat to a species that matters; so too does the suffering of individual animals.”

Raising public awareness, activism and stricter enforcement are the only ways to save whatever is left of the wildlife. If people are poor, they will only continue to try and make money in any way possible, which includes killing wildlife. Community education programmes must enlighten them to value their wildlife, and also provide them with alternative means of earning a livelihood. Consumers from wealthier nations have to end the demand side of the equation. Without demand, there will be no incentive for black market to flourish.

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The Earth has witnessed 5 great extinctions in the last half a billion years. We are now on the brink of the 6th great extinction. We lose a distinct species, of one sort or another, every ten minutes. The normal “background rate of extinction” is roughly 1-2 species per year. That rate is between 100 and 1000 times faster than the background rate of species extinction. This one is unique as the scale of extinction we’re seeing now is mainly due to the activities of a single species, namely us.

Terry Glavin takes us on a personal odyssey as he “journeys among the Lost and Left Behind” worlds. He gives a vivid and poignant account of the scale of loss of species, and the way it affects our lives. On a grander scale, he laments not only the extinction of species, but the dying of languages and cultures, that accompany such losses.

I was pleasantly surprised at the attention he gave to Singapore, as an entire chapter was devoted to this island state and how it represents the paradox of having destroyed most of its rainforests. 95% of Singapore was covered by primary rainforests till the mid 1800s. Now only a fraction of 1%  of that remains, having been replaced by a mass of urban construction.

At the same time, this is the place where through the efforts of the Singapore Zoo, we are seeing a kind of “Noah’s Ark” with a large collection of the “living dead.”  Species like the Bali mynah, pygmy hippo, the proboscis monkey, the orangutans, that are nurtured in enclosed spaces, which otherwise are more or less certain of dying out as a species in their native habitats, as those very same habitats are being decimated rapidly.

I was particularly saddened by his account of the ecological disaster in Russia….a country that I know very little about, let alone seen it. Yet, I could feel the pangs of pain, because when you care about the planet as a whole, political demarcations matter little…Nature, its diversity and its inhabitants belong to all of us.

Glavin takes us to Khabarovsk (I had to look it up in the Atlas, it’s on the Far Eastern side of Russia closer to the border with China) where he recounts the story of how the privatisation of the Soviet Union led to forest licences falling into criminal hands, plundering forests for mineral deposits and leading to the collapse of fisheries. The 200 year old Forest Service was abolished, with the Ministry of Natural resources becoming the main conduit for plundering the Far East’s natural wealth. Since the 1990s, the Amur river in Russia has lost 90% of its salmon species. In other parts of  Russia, more than 90% of the world’s saiga antelope have disappeared from the Russian steppes and the plains of Kazhakstan.

It’s not just the genetic diversity of animal species that we are losing, but plant species too, particularly of food crops. Glavin dwells in the chapter on “An Apple is a Kind of Rose” not on exotic species in exotic lands, but on the humble apples and potatoes and our every day food crops.

According to research on food crop extinctions by Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI), 86% of the 7098 apple varieties in America have disappeared. Out of 357 onion varieties, only 27 remain. Of 307 sweet-corn varieities, only 12 remain, and so is the fate of cabbages, radishes, lettuces, watermelons and other domesticated crops.

Throughout the 20th century, we are losing a variety of subspecies of domesticated vegetables and fruits to a few industrial hybrid varieties with long shelf lives, that are actively promoted by large companies. About 75 % of all global food production now come from only a dozen crops and only a few species of those crops.

Despite the gloomy discoveries, Glavin finds hope in many places. I was encouraged by his fascinating journey to Costa Rica, one of the few countries in the world which has gone to great lengths to maintain its tropical rainforests and its ecological heritage, symbolised by the amazing humming birds and the resplendent Quetzal.

Glavin found hope in the vaults of the Royal Kew Garden, where seeds of several plant species are caringly preserved for research and for posterity. So too does he find hope in remote North Eastern corner of India, in a village called Khonoma, where the tribal communities don’t resort to the centuries old habit of slash and burn agriculture, but a technique called pollarding, to encourage the tree to produce new growth on a regular basis in order to maintain a supply of new wood for various purposes.

If we are to be a living, breathing world, rich in diversity and abundance of life, then as Glavin puts it, we “have to take the helm” and allow for such diversity to flourish. It will be hard work, he acknowledges, but “you do what can, everything you can”

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