Humans Drive Rare Dolphin to Extinction

Never again, these fellow intelligent travellers are forever gone. This is poverty, no it is sinful, if ever there was sin, withor without a deity.

Your average Republican plans for the future generation:

"I believe in making the world a better place for our children....but not our children's children because I don't think children should be having sex."

Jack Handy

As my wife has often said, "Man is the most endangered species."

Everything on the planet lives on checks and balances. For instance, deer overpopulate, they start to starve after overgrazing. Predators increase, reduce the deer population. Fewer deer, graze increases, predators diminish until balance is restored. (oversimplified, I know, but that's the idea)

Man seems just intelligent enough to overcome or put off the challenges to population overgrowth by natural means. Ever more virulent strains of diseases are warded off by new medicines and vaccines. Starvation by agribusiness' chemical fertilizers (gradually salinating the soil, but great short term results) and GM foods and animals.

Nature keeps upping the ante, but we are just smart enough to offset her efforts, but not smart enough to limit our population to what the earth can sustain. Eventually, it will crash, but sadly it will likely take the rest of the beauty and diversity of the world with it.

Years ago I read the "Gaia Hypothesis." Earth as a living, self-regulating presence As I meditated upon the book, I tried to assign Man's place in the scheme of things. My final conclusion. If Gaia, the Earth, is a living organism, Man can only be brain cancer. Cancer cells continue to multiply, feeding on and destroying their host's vital organs until the host finally dies. That seems an apt description of Man on Earth.

Since the book was published, I have seen very little in the activities of the human race that challenges that opinion.

Next on the list: Tibet!

Just last year I saw a documentary about a man who was working to save the last pod of these creatures, he loved them, and had faith they would survive. They were wonderful, smart, playful, communal, cooperative, among the most intelligent and evolved, unique, amazing creatures ever to grace our planet. A fascinating nation of beings, a singular triumph of life on earth.

And just now, they are all gone. Forever.

It's very discouraging to see Kelmer and others demonizing China for this. Shall we start naming the species that citizens of the United States have made extinct? Shall we examine the recent actions of the Bush administration that will cause many more extinctions? China itself is not the villain. China is not the "other." We are all "the other."

DJDiaLogic, Children's grand children asking questions? I honestly doubt they will be here.

Dear Roundabout-
I actually agree with your philosophical existential perspective. Yes, nothing lasts forever in the big picture.

However, in the mean time, while we're here, perhaps we can do something in this reality. It's the only reality I have, and any semblance of knowlege, experience, certainty, instincts, are present here. Now.

I have a freind who says something to the effect of, "Great. Say it all doesn't matter because it's all an illusion, or a dream. What happens if I smash your hand with this hammer? You act. YOu do something to try andstop the pain/damage. Perhaps that looks like defending yourself? Or you can wax philosophic and state casually, that it all doesn't mean shit because in the end we're all going the way of the dinosaur. Besides, if you bleed to death, no biggie. Just be comforted in the idea (speculation) that we're probably just paving the way for the next thing."

I think to find our situation amusing is a coping mechanism. Especially when the funny idea is based on speculation. It's understandable. Our situation is literally quite painful and I for one feel so overwhelmingly powerless sometimes, I need a disconnect just to make it through the day.

"Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God's eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real." -Derrick Jensen

Philosophy allows me not to act.

-Punk

"So long, and thanks for all the fish"

They are all now swimming with Douglas Adams.

The last headline could be - Humans Drive Themselves To Extinction.

"So long, and thanks for all the fish"

I'm sorry but, as I approach the end of my days in this particular reality, I find myself increasingly amused at the prospect of the extinction of the human race. What has become particularly comical is the increasing numbers of folks wringing their hands over the plight of this, that or the other species that is about to become extinct.
People running around beseeching us to "save the Earth" haven't got a clue. The Earth isn't going anywhere. We are. We should be talking about saving the humans. A happy byproduct of saving ourselves would, out of necessity, be "saving the Earth"! We can't have us without it! What part of this don't we understand?
The Earth did just fine without us for billions of years. After we have successfully followed the dinosaurs into extinction the Earth will continue to evolve and flourish without us. It will heal itself. It will bring forth new species to take the place of those that have gone.
Perhaps another creature will follow an entirely different evolutionary path to "sentience" and achieve that thing that humans never could: Civilization.

y2kcockroach, why not indeed? I guess I have the idea that big mammals make a bigger impression than the other hapless little beasts
that we regularly wipe off the planet. (You know how we like those big mammals...) But you're right of course; the demise of passenger
pigeons was a huge tragedy.

Hey "dingoboy", why not start with the passenger pigeon?

Oh yeah, and please, everyone who thinks this is a problem with the Chinese, let's not forget the buffalo.

What is most horrifying and tragic is that (as few posters here seem to realize) the Chinese actually acted quite quickly and aggressively to save the baiji and still failed. In fact, their willingness to divert funds, build a semi-wild preserve for the dolphins, and educate the public would put to shame most any other efforts being made to save rare species around the world. It was a race against time that everyone lost. (I commend to you the chapter "Blind Panic," pages 143-178, of Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See, New York: Ballantine Books, 1990).

The Yangtze River has been so horribly polluted for so long that the baiji's eyes had atrophied from lack of use, and it navigated by sonar. The river is the main highway for industrial transport in China, and the constant noise of barge motors (water is an excellent sound carrier) wreaked havoc with the baiji's navigation system. Most of the last survivors were probably killed by outboard propellers when they tried to surface too quickly after diving under a boat, or fatally wounded by fishing hooks and nets.

fabgo, good points. We need more reverence for the whole vast web, not just the animals (usually mammals) that we deem cute enough to
worry about.
And for all of you slagging off the Chinese, right now, in the great U.S. of A., Wyoming and Iowa are preparing to knock off most of their
native wolf population, using planes and helicopters. (Now that's a fair fight.) Make some noise if you care, people. They start shooting
this fall. I live in an area where we stupidly knocked off a lot of the "higher up" mammals on the food chain and now everyone complains
about the whitetailed deer explosion and how we're overrun with rabbits.

Did someone say Native American?

When was the last time anyone bumped into someone on American soil that did not come from some ancestor off a boat?

The historical record is clear. Many Native Americans are -- if not completely -- all but extinct and singularly at the hands of human invaders.

Let us all take the bowl and the robe and wash the blood off our pointing fingers!

Your children's grand children will ask "What is a dolphin?"

Greed and carelessness have no boundaries....

Sorry to hear the end of another species. Habitat destruction is the problem that all species face especially ours.

Cockroaches and such are much more able to make it on their own than we are. All you big time evolution fans out there should be rejoicing.

The Yangtze River has been polluted for years. If the people of China have died from drinking it, we know damned well the species swimming in it would eventually join them.

I wonder if Secretary of Treasury and "environmentalist", Henry Paulson approves of this devastating pollution or if he thinks it is "just" the cost of doing business?

We are what we are. Our success as a species will decimate many other species. Education and enlightenment is the only way. But how will we educate the roughly 9 billion of us expected by the year 2070. Most will be scrambling just to survive. Shed a tear for natures marvelous creations caught in our bow wave and wake.

It is not quite accurate to say that "humans drove these rare dolphins to extinction." That's almost as bad as another headline I saw for this story: "The Dolphins That Couldn't Live With Humans." The truth is that these dolphins had been living with humans for thousands of years, in a very highly populated region, and they managed to survive for all that time. It is the way humans are currently living that drove them to extinction, not the mere presence of humans. If humans would quit emulating the hyper-polluting and destructive West, fewer species would go extinct.

When the crash comes I'll welcome eating dogs, tigerballs and dinosaur bones for dinner. Humans? Ummmmmm.....

Chas-
Yes indeed. We knowingly poison our water, food, air, and landbase- with all it's indispensable life forms. For now I'd call that insanity. But extinct seems right around the bend.

Ragnarok-
Thanks for even using the term "Carrying Capacity". Too few have ever even heard it.William Catton now for a while too eh?

Question: What do you call a life form that murders its own kind, drives other life forms to the brink of extinction, destroys its environment, the eco system and pollutes the oceans and contaminates and poisons the atmosphere.

Answer: Extinct!

I can't believe anyone is surprised by this.... China is the country that eats dogs(as well as anything else that moves, even other people), tiger balls and dinosaur bones.

We need to plan our own growth as a specie, 6+ billions of us is already too many it seems for the carrying capacity of our mother Earth.

Overpopulation plus Capitalist consumerism and we are certainly going to have extinct species, hunger, disease, pestilence, war...after all, Thomas Malthus told us so a long time ago.

What difference does it make? 13 or 0, their habitat has effectively been destroyed anyway. The problem I am having with these conservation efforts is that we protect a bare minimum number of these species in some isolated pocket called a "national park" or a "wildlife refuge" while we humans absolutely ravage the rest of the planet.

The vital understanding that our species are part of an ecosystem has been lost from our collective consciousness. Thus we find ourselves in our current predicament, where global warming, resource depletion or a combination of both will wipe us out sooner or later.

Saving some dolphin isn't going to make any difference until we regain our long lost reverence for mother nature - the kind of reverence the aboriginal and native American people had before we wiped them all out. And I dare you to look at the world's current 6.5 billion population and figure out a way to make that happen.

I like Happy Days comment. Everybody wanted what they thought was an "American Lifestyle". Capitalism Sucks.

I thought the Chinese were smarter than this. This is very sad. If the Chinese can't figure out how to live with nature for the long term, it doesn't bode well for any of us.

I am heartened to see that the real cause is know. Like POGO said "I have seen the enemy and it is me" or some such thing. China, hey they kill people as well, have you brushed your teeth lately or have your children licked their China toys. This is FREE TRADE American style. I like the way China took care of the toothpaste issue though. Do you think we could get that in the US. White collar crime get death.

Kelmer, you said it all

It is an absolute inevitability that if the human race continues to grow and pump out mega tons of industrial pollution the last extinction will be themselves.

Conservationists described the extinction as a "shocking tragedy", caused not by active persecution but accidentally and carelessly through a combination of factors including unsustainable fishing and mass shipping.

??? This was not "accidental or careless." It was a result of placing a higher priority on profit$ and power than on wild creatures or their environments/habitats.

Why couldn't a large number of them, at least, been transplanted to healthful rivers in other parts of the world? Or at least moved to well managed aquaria?

You can't only blame the Chinese for this , like some people seem to do. This is driven by the USA , capitalism, and international trade, which the US is the largest consumer and waste creator of. Mass consumption lifestyles of the US have spread around the globe and it is causing this. It seems to me.

I'm waiting for a platitude-filled column by Thomas Friedman lugubriously lamenting the loss of this species, while pointing out all of China's wonderful economic successes thanks to "free" markets and corporate globalization, concluding with something to the effect of how there can be no progress without sacrifice.

Oh, wow, and here I thought the Chinese didn't give a hoot about HUMAN life! Even animals aren't safe - what IS it with them?

The industrialization of the Yangtze.
Demi-god status among fishermen.
"The hopes of each person on the survey died at different points; everyone had a moment of realisation that we weren't going to find anything."
A shuddering sigh should pass through us all. This is but the first (mammal) of the cascade. Wake up world.
Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Mass extinction.

If we kill enough diversity....

maybe we can make the list too. It ain't fer lack of tryin.

But, who knows? Maybe there's some miracle technology right around the corner just waiting to save us from......technology. Or a magic pill or cool-aid....

Success! One down and a few thousand to go until we're NUMBER ONE!

More to come ...hold on to your hats.

Thank you, Sample, Common Dreams, or the Sydney Morning Herald, for putting the headline in the active voice. Too often, we see headlines like "Dolphin becomes extinct," or "Blacks pulled over for traffic tickets more often than whites," or "Wives abused more frequently in Red states," etc., never mentioning who does these things. It's as if they just "happen," and there's no perpetrator. It's time to look at the broader picture, and with this headline, you have.

Great job China, you are a class act. Put that accomplishment in a banner over next year's Olympics.