Chinese river dolphin may not be extinct: expert By China correspondent Stephen McDonell Posted August 10, 2007 19:08:00 Updated August 10, 2007 19:18:00 Last year an international research team searched for the baiji but did not find any. There was an official announcement this week that the baiji, also known as the Chinese river dolphin, was extinct, but it is now claimed those reports were exaggerated. It would have been the first large vertebrate to be declared extinct in more than 50 years. But the professor who headed the joint Chinese and international research team, Professor Wang Ding, says the dolphin may still exist. In November and December last year, Professor Ding searched for the baiji but did not find any. However he says the team cannot conclude the animal is extinct. "This is only one survey and...you can't have a sample in a survey, so you cannot say the baiji all is gone by the result of only one survey," he said. "For example, there is some side channels or some tributaries [where] we cannot go because of a restriction of navigation rules, and also we don't survey during the night-time so we may miss some animals in the Yangtze River." Professor Ding says based on anecdotal evidence, he remains confident the dolphins are still out there. "I'm pretty much sure there are a few of them left somewhere in the Yangtze River," he said. "I keep receiving reports from fishermen, they say they saw a couple of baiji somewhere, sometime. "But unfortunately most of them cannot be confirmed, and the Yangtze River is a big river, so I really cannot say the Baiji is already gone, there is no baiji left at all, I really cannot say that." However he acknowledges that if the dolphins are not extinct, they face a murky future in the Yangtze River due to human activities. "The Yangtze River is the so-called the 'golden channel' of the country - there is so much going on in the Yangtze River, like transportation, fishery, pollution and the construction work of some hydraulic projects," he said. Professor Ding says this leads him to a pessimistic outlook on the animal's future. "I don't think it would be possible to turn around in the near future," he said. "Maybe in the long-term, the Chinese people, if they recognise the problem, will put so much effort on this to help the Yangtze River, not only for the baiji but also for the whole ecosystem of the Yangtze River."
