White Dolphin Functionally Extict

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."

Comments

Idiots.

[Fayn]

Hindsight in 20-20 indeed. Maybe now governments will get the idea that if you want to protect a species, you actually have to protect it. Just sitting arond and holding press conferences and askind advisors endlessly will not solve a single thing. This crap needs to change, and soon.

Re:Oops!

[J.R. Random]

Makes me feel bad about the tuna sandwiches I had for dinner last night.

While many ocean dolphins do get killed by tuna nets, the species that went extinct was a river dolphin, unique to the Yangtze. They were done in by the increasing pollution of that river. So instead of feeling bad about the tuna sandwiches you had you should feel bad about the cheap DVD player you bought -- not only did the people who put it together get paid slave wages, but the company that employed them didn't "waste" any money on pollution control.

Re:Why do we care all that much?

[NeutronCowboy]

Because this extinction can be directly traced to human interference. Because the animal was part of an ecosystem that has now been diminished, and human interference therefore harmed the entire ecosystem. Because diminished ecosystems are less resistant to new predators and diseases. Because diminished ecosystems have a point of no return at which they completely collapse, even if other species are still present.

Most importantly though, because the planet just got a little less interesting and wondrous.

I agree.

[Irvu]

I agree. In the book he gives a poiniant description of the environment of the Baiji. Due to heavy traffic the river itself contains constant mechanical noise. For a creature that uses sonar to see and move life in white noise is blindness. He compared it sleshwere eloquently to spending your life in a snowstorm able to see but seeing nothing.

As much as people may want to celebrate this, or at least gloat, about the weak dying off and this being part of the "natural cycle" I say that's just a bit sick and way too short sighted.

I'm an environmentalist for many reasons chief among them is that I'm selfish. No matter how much we may like to hide in our offices we depend, completely depend, upon the life on the earth around us. Between Dolphins dying in the Yangtse, to the sheer number of ocean species that will die as the ice retreats the web we depend on is, strand by strand, being cut. Sitting around and saying "I told you so" to each other will do no good. Either we all (all animals) survive or we don't but resorting to simple stories gets us nowhere.

Re:I can only say...

[GeckoX]

20 Million Years.

Repeat after me: Twenty Million Years

Yeah, they just happened to have been naturally selected for extinction now, nevermind that we KNOW exactly what the cause of their decline has been, and that we KNOW it is because of OUR artificial impact on their natural environment.

You couldn't have picked a worse place or time to pull that steaming pile of shit out.

Re: Embraceable Monoculture

[mpapet]

Sometimes stuff dies.
Marginalizing an important issue like biodiversity is fun isn't it?

This is /. where software monoculture is almost universally agreed is a Bad Thing(r).

It stands to reason a biologic monoculture carries with it even more dire consequences than software. Our best interests are served to ensure there are as many species as possible walking/crawling/swimming around.

Let me give you an example. Bees. The American commercial bee population is a monoculture. In California the central valley bee population has been decimated by a disease that the bee keepers can no longer control. Guess what? No tree nut harvest. How about the other plants that bees pollinate? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=6299480

Now, what happens when it's cows or corn? Rice? Wheat? Please re-examine this belief carefully and mod parent down.

Re:I can only say...

[DigitalRaptor]

OK, so it's natural selection.

The problem is this: We can pick our actions. We cannot pick their consequences.

Anyone who thinks humans can't have an impact on the environment have their heads so far up their butts that the lump in their throat is their nose.

Our actions or lack of actions do have consequences, and we do have to live with those consequences.

I have no idea what the consequence of this species being lost will be, but I guarantee there will be consequences, and doubt very highly that they will be positive and produce a net gain in the world.

Very skilled idiots.

[jd]

• The dolphin was officially down to 6 or less a decade ago.
  
• It was featured in Douglas Adams' "Last Chance To See" as critically endangered sometime before that.
  
• The two that the Chinese had in captivity died due to neglect and the use of exactly the kind of netting that have been killing them along the river for containment.
  
• The problem with fishing was not limited to overfishing - there are plenty of fish upriver of the dam. The problem was that the Chinese saw no point in allowing the dolphins and the fish to be in the same stretch of river.
  
• The Chinese could - very easily - have moved the dolphins upriver of the dam, getting them out of the way of boats, pollution, etc. The decision not to do so had nothing to do with capability, money, resources, fish, pollution, or any other such problem. The decision not to was based on apathy.
  
• The environmentalists were equally capable of moving the dolphins. The politicians could hardly have stopped them - even if they wanted to. And why would they have wanted to? It would have gotten rid of the problem, would have allowed them to claim credit if the solution worked, and would have cost them nothing if it had failed.
  
• Environmentalists were equally capable of relocating the dolphins. There's so much boat traffic and so much illegal fishing, who would have noticed the Rainbow Warrior flooding a compartment and stuffing a few dolphins in it? The dolphins need a fresh water river and there's not exactly a world shortage of those.
  
• And the marine parks around the world? They could have charged a small fortune to exhibit a river dolphin, run a captive breeding program and got their name in lights for saving an entire species. So what do they do? Uh.... Nothing?
  
• Gene banks and cloning groups? Silent. No efforts on saving the genetic data for later generations, no efforts by geneticists to produce a clone, not even an effort to map the genes to see what made them what they were. (Wheat you can find next year. Humans will be around for a loong time. But the plants and animals that you get one chance at and that's it?)
  

I have to give credit where credit is due, though. The stupidity of all the organizations - from Greenpeace to the Chinese Government - that could have made a difference but chose not to make a difference that mattered is not the mundane stupidity we see in everyday life. This is a highly trained, highly refined breed of stupidity that only the truly gifted hand-wringer could develop.

Re:Oops!

[Anonymous Coward]

So if we're going to feel bad about something, feel bad that some Chinese kid had food to eat and could go places.

Re:Overloards

[Lord_Dweomer]

I don't see how you can make wild assumptions about the morality of the /. user-base from observing many people who obviously have a different sense of humor than you do making jokes. Its called grave humor and it applies to anything sad. Does this suck? YES. Big time. But making a joke about it does not lessen the seriousness of it, it just lets us have a much needed chuckle.

Try pulling the stick out of your ass before you go judging others.

Re:Oops!

[Keebler71]

They were done in by the increasing pollution of that river. So instead of feeling bad about the tuna sandwiches you had you should feel bad about the cheap DVD player you bought -- not only did the people who put it together get paid slave wages,...

Are you implying that I should feel bad about buying something that creates a job in a part of the world that desperately needs them? What is a slave wage to you may be a godsend to the worker. To quote Sowell: "The real minimum wage is zero [unemployment]."

Re:Oops!

[operagost]

Sheesh, 20 million years of succesful living as a species, and now you're dead because of someone who lives for, say, 60 years.

Wow, isn't that a heavily weighted argument. Can't really make a single individual's lifespan stand against the entire existence of a species. For your next act, I hope you will advocate razing all steel-framed buildings in favor of adobe huts because steel buildings last, say, 60 years, while adobe huts have been build for thousands.

Re:Oops!

[noamsml]

I can believe that a rock is falling onto my head, but it doesn't keep me from avoiding it. The simple fact that evolution and natural selection are integral parts of life does not mean that a sentient being cannot defy the drive to survive or extinguish competing species. In fact, such sentient decisions are also part of natural selection.

The name itself, "natural selection", is somewhat misleading. Natural selection does not imply lack of human intervention. On the contrary, humans are part of, influence, are influenced by, and are subject to natural selection and evolution. Therefore, you are wrong to think that natural selection is only such if we stand aside and let nature do its will. That is the fallacy of the Social Darwinist as Divine Right Theorist: Success must take intervention and attempts of change into account in order for it to be truly objective.

Sorry, I went on a limb there, didn't I?

Re:Oops!

[Kohath]

And to those who would claim that human life is more precious than animal life... why?

These are some example questions. Assume you're on vacation far away and none of this causes you any direct physical harm. Now the questions:

- Say there's going to be a huge tragedy and someone's family is going to die. If you could chose whether your family dies or someone other family dies, which would you choose?

- Say there's going to be a huge accident and a whole town or city is going to be destroyed (comet, bomb, whatever)? Do you want it to be the town where you live, or some other town?

- Say there's going to be a plague and a whole nation is going to die from it. It will be everyone who speaks a particular language. Do you want it to be your people, or some others?

Are you getting it yet? It's pretty obvious. Everyone else understands the point implicitly -- all the rational ones anyway. It's OK if you're not. Be insane all you want. Just stop recruiting.