On Tuesday the Zoological Society of London launched a new conservation called Edge. It’s an acronym for ‘ecologically distinct and globally endangered’ and was described in The Guardian newspaper as an ambitious project by British scientists to save the planet’s rarest and most unusual animals.
There is a real need for an established, knowledgeable and committed group of scientists to focus in on the planet’s rarest animal species many of which are currently receiving very little conservation attention. Indeed, too many environmental groups focus on species which are charismatic rather than threatened. For example, Greenpeace sends ships to the Antarctic each year to save Minke whales — whales which have been referred to as the rabbits of the sea.
But I’m not convinced that Edge is really going to make a difference.
A spokesman for the program, Dr Jonathan Baillie, told The Guardian: “The almost-blind Yanghtze river dolphin is at the top of the list. It’s extremely threatened, a team was recently out there looking for it and could not find one – they truly are on the verge of extinction.”
In fact despite two extensive surveys in the last two years, not a single Yangtze River Dolphin, Lipotes vexillifera, has been seen since September 2004 and the species was declared functionally extinct late last year.
Dr Randall Reeves, Chair of the Cetacean Specialist Group at the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) has said that the loss of the dolphin, also known as the Baiji, would be equivalent to the ‘snapping off a complete branch from the tree of mammalian radiation’.
Illegal fishing practices are thought to have contributed to the species decline. Illegal fishing is an ongoing issue in China where set net, poisoning, dynamite, rolling hook (lines of iron hooks set across the flow of the river) and electro-fishing are officially banned along the entire length of the Yangtze River, but reportedly still widely practiced.
So what does the Royal Society propose to save this probably already extinct species of freshwater dolphin?
According to their website: interview Chinese fisherman including to promote awareness amongst local people along the river about the importance of conserving the fragile Yangtze ecosystem and its many threatened species.
But why should subsistence Chinese fishermen, probably struggling to feed their own families, care about “threatened species” and is it the job of a British-based Zoological society to “educate them”?
The Swiss-based Baiji.org Foundation has a perhaps more realistic approach including employing guards to enforcing fishing legislation where there is a viable population of the Yangtze Finless Porpoise, Neophocaena phocaenoides. Indeed the Baiji.org Foundation, recognising the Yangtze River Dolphin is now extinct, is refocusing its efforts on practical measures for the conservation of another freshwater mammal.
There are perhaps 2,000 finless porpoises in the Yangtze and a breeding population of 26 porpoises has been successfully established in the Tian-e-Zhou reserve.
As well as working towards the establishment of populations in this freshwater reserve, the Baiji.org Foundation has supported a captive breeding program and in 2005 the Baiji Conservation Aquarium at the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan witnessed the birth of the first-ever freshwater cetacean in captivity, a healthy Yangtze Finless Porpoise.
In conclusion, it is encouraging that the Zoological Society of London, a well respected and well resourced environment group, has just committed to the conservation of ecologically distinct and globally endangered species.
But avoiding the extinction of more ecologically distinct and globally endangered species such as the Yangtze River Dolphin will require much more than “promoting awareness amongst local people” and asking for donations at a website. Yet this appears to be the extent of the strategy for the animal species at the top of the list for Edge, furthermore, it’s a species already considered by the world’s cetacean experts to be extinct!
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I would have thought the most pressing task would be to obtain and store some Baiji reproductive material so they can be artificially inseminated in related species.
And if there is so few of them, surely the best place for the remaining ones is in a zoo, under captive breeding until they can be released again?
But it seems the function of near extinct species is to provide opportunities for hand wringing and donations.
Here’s another population of perhaps heading for extinction:
http://www.alaskareport.com/reu77352.htm
“Biologists say the reason for the precipitous decline since the 1990s was simple — overharvesting by the area’s Alaska Natives, mostly Athabascan Indians, who are entitled by law to pursue their traditional whale hunts.
Native groups agreed to curb hunting until stocks return to higher levels, but that does not appear to be helping the whales recover, according to Smith.
Environmentalists say it should be no surprise that belugas are faltering in Alaska’s most industrialized waterway.”
Why conduct research on a species that has gone extinct and the causes of extinction can hardly have no doubts…
Actually, get the uncomfortable feeling that the Baijis name might be used for commercial reasons??? Really hope I’m dead wrong on this.
No , Zoological Society , my advice is , focus your efforts on some endangered species that are
still alive…
It is a little disingenuous to suggest the Edge is looking to do something for extinct animals. They don’t say this at all.
I actually read their site this morning prior to seeing your comments on the article published elsewhere. They state, “….If any baiji still survive in the Yangtze system, it is imperative to locate these last individuals as soon as possible. Even if the species is already extinct, there is no clear understanding of which threat processes caused its decline……”
This would mean they want to understand the exinction processes as; ” ….any better information on the specific reasons for the decline of the baiji will be invaluable for developing conservation strategies for preserving the Yangtze’s other threatened cetacean, the Yangtze finless porpoise (the world’s only freshwater porpoise), and the two other Top 100 EDGE river dolpins – the Ganges and Indus River dolphins…..”.
This is quite clear. Either you wish to be controversial to create debate or you are choosing to ignore their point.
David,
IMO ‘Edge’ have choosen to ignore expert advice, various published and unpublished studies, and the blinking obvious.
You would do well to read a bit more than what is at the Edge website if you want to understand the issue.
If you are looking for scientific references you could start with a google of this site also read the comments (eg. should be a reference to three short papers in the June 2006 issue of Conservation Biology).
If you want to read some fascinating anecdotal then find the weblog of two American scientists, Donald Hoard and Stefanie Watcher, who went in search of the Baiji a few years ago.
What a classic beat up on the Belugas. The headline says “Beluga whales facing extinction in Alaska” but in reality it is only a small localised population in a very small part of Alaska.
The real doozy was the description of the circumstances in Cook inlet as;
“Oil drilling, associated bustle and noise, vessel-traffic pressures from thriving cargo-shipping and commercial fishing activities, sewage and storm water runoff from Alaska’s most densely populated region and other industrial factors are likely hurting the belugas, according to environmentalists”.
For the record, data on this “most densely populated region” can be found at; http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/02000.html
There are only 663,000 Alaskans of which only 271,000 reside in Anchorage where the mind boggles at the character and scale of the sewerage problems etc.
Once again we have a supposedly genetically distinct population being held out as threatened when, for all we know, some of the Beluga population may simply have moved away from the inlet to a quieter location or for better fishing.
There’s a mammalian bias at this website. What of those threatened locusts?
Of course La Pantera. It’s ironic that GP get criticised for a similar thing in the hope of getting a similar outcome.
Jennifer:” For example, Greenpeace sends ships to the Antarctic each year to save Minke whales — whales which have been referred to as the rabbits of the sea. ”
No Jennifer, the GP official policy , is to stop commercial whaling in the Southern Oceans Sanctuary….bla, bla , bla….
I’m confused…
‘There is a real need for an established, knowledgeable and committed group of scientists to focus in on the planet’s rarest animal species many of which are currently receiving very little conservation attention….’
followed by
‘But why should subsistence Chinese fishermen, probably struggling to feed their own families, care about “threatened species’ – Jennifer
Logically this would apply to any threatened species whose habitat is shared with subsistence human populations….
Once again this forum appears to be very keen to support environmental action provided it on no account involves any environmentalists taking any action whatsoever….
I have to say beating up on a eight year old girl on that other thread really was plumbing the depths…
Mind you David@Tokyo rolling out an unthreatened ‘endangered’ cetacean was a bit of a turn up for the books… must have been concentrating a little to hard on his unsustainable aborigional whale hunts agenda….