[5] It is not to be confused with the Chinese white dolphin or the finless porpoise. Population numbers - which environmentalists have generally put at 55 and the Department of Conservation has estimated at between 48 and 69 - had dropped 97 per cent as a result of fishing since the 1970s, NABU International Nature Conservation Foundation said in a statement. In the 1950s, the population was estimated at 6,000 animals,[25] but declined rapidly over the subsequent five decades. Shishou has been described as being "like a miniature Yangtze ... possessing all of the requirements for a semi-natural reserve". The mobile game lets players try to break the world freediving record as champion free-diver William Trubridge, while saving Maui's dolphins from gillnets. IWC/52/4. 'I was slipping down a slope and however hard I tried to grip the bank, I couldn't stop.'. The sighting has not been confirmed by independent media sources. Where is the baiji habitat? Meanwhile, a crowd-funding campaign by a Wellington game developer Gamestarter has raised $6560 of the $10,000 it is aiming for to create a mobile game around the plight of the dolphins.

[42], The fifth protected area is an isolated oxbow lake located off of the north bank of the river near to Shishou City: the Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow Semi-natural Reserve. The first Chinese aquatic species protection organisation, the Baiji Dolphin Conservation Foundation of Wuhan (武汉白鱀豚保护基金), was founded in December 1996. Then the number dropped down to 400 by the 1980s and then to 13 in 1997 when a full-fledged search was conducted. PaleoBios 42:1-46. The baiji's extinction is the first of a large mammal species for 50 years and is directly attributable to mankind. Four were built in the main Yangtze channel where baiji are actively protected and fishing is banned: two national reserves (Shishou City and Xin-Luo) and two provincial (Tongling and Zhenjiang). A sexually mature female was captured in late 1995, but died after half a year in 1996 when the Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow Nature Reserve (石首半自然白鱀豚保护区), which had contained only finless porpoises since 1990, was flooded. [9], A related creature from the Neogene period is Parapontoporia. "It is noticeable that the river's water quality and ecosystem have kept improving, thanks to state-led protection efforts," he said, stressing that hope prevails for the species to recover in number if environmental improvement continues. [20], As well as these five protected areas there are also five "Protection Stations" in Jianli, Chenglingji, Hukou, Wuhu and Zhengjiang. [59] Xinhua also reported that tens of billions of yuan had been spent to prevent pollution and geological disasters by tree planting, measures to maintain species diversification, shutting down 1,500 polluting industrial and mining enterprises and building 70 sewage and waste treatment plants, all of which are "progressing well." Fish & Wildlife Service Species Profile, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baiji&oldid=979346316, IUCN Red List critically endangered species, Articles containing simplified Chinese-language text, Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text, Species endangered by collisions with vehicles, Articles with dead external links from May 2017, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles containing Chinese-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 20 September 2020, at 07:17. For three years, the foundation has been organizing observation trips to raise protection awareness about the Yangtze's freshwater dolphins. There have also been captured/killed individuals that have had helminth infestations in the stomach which leads scientists to believe that parasitic infections could be another cause of decline amongst the Baiji.

on short interspersed repetitive elements (SINEs). In the past 20 years, five nature reserves have been The baiji, in the region of Yangtze, is regarded as a symbol of peace and prosperity.[24].