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"Long
before it's in the papers"
September 11, 2007
RETURN
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Reports of dolphin’s demise premature
Aug. 31, 2007
Courtesy WWF
and World Science staff
Recently reported extinct, a Yangtze River dolphin has been sighted, Chinese media has reported.
That means there’s still a chance for people to take action to protect
dolphins in the river from extinction, the Washington, D.C.-based World Wildlife Fund announced.
Chinese media reported that a businessman in Tongling City in east China’s Anhui Province filmed “a big white animal” with his digital camera on Aug. 19. A leading scientist at the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences later confirmed
that the footage showed the mammal, also known as the Baiji dolphin, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
It’s the first Baiji reported in the Yangtze since a scientific
expedition last year, during which no
Baiji was spotted. At the time, the fund and many scientists agreed
the species was “functionally extinct.”
“This sighting presents a last hope that the Baiji may not go the way of the
dodo bird,” said Karen Baragona, Yangtze River Basin Program leader at
the fund. “Other species have been brought back from the brink of extinction like the
southern right whale and white rhinos, but only through the most intensive
conservation efforts.”
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Recently reported extinct, a Yangtze River dolphin has been sighted, Chinese media has reported.
That means there’s still a chance for people to take further action and protect cetaceans in the river from extinction, the Washington, D.C.-based World Wildlife Fund announced.
Chinese media reported that a local businessman in Tongling City in east China’s Anhui Province filmed “a big white animal” with his digital camera on August 19. A leading scientist at the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences later confirmed the footage to show the mammal, also known as the Baiji dolphin, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
It is the first Baiji reportedly found in the Yangtze since a scientific expedition last year, during which no single Baiji was spotted. At the time, the fund and many scientists agreed that this species was “functionally extinct.”
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