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China's Endangered "River Pig"


Economic Observer Online
April 18, 2012
By Chen Anqing (陈安庆) and Lu Feng (陆枫)
Translated by Laura Lin
Original article:
[Chinese]

The Yangtze finless porpoise (江豚), commonly known as the "river pig" by local people on account of its less-than-stunning looks, is a unique freshwater porpoise subspecies that has lived in the Yangtze River and nearby lakes for more than 25 million years.

Now this much-adored mammal that has a smiley face and an intelligence level comparable with a gorilla faces imminent extinction.

Since early March, some 12 of these porpoises, classified as a second-level protected animal in China, have been found dead around the Dongting Lake Basin area in China's central Hunan Province.

Of the 12 dead porpoises, three were highly decomposed and buried where they were found, and another two were washed away. The other 7 bodies have been salvaged for post-mortem examination.

After three consecutive years of field investigations by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it has been found that there are all together only 1,500 of the finless porpoises remaining.

They are mainly found in the waters of the Yangtze River, with eighty-five living in Dongting Lake, and between three and four hundred in Poyang Lake.

But they are diminishing at an annual rate of 5 to 10 percent.

Man-made Disaster

According to the preliminary autopsy discovery of the mammal, "there were no fatal exterior wounds found, and there was no residue found in their digestive system. In addition, the animals seemed to have developed some lesions," said Xie Yongjun (谢拥军), member of the Yueyang City Finless Porpoise Society as well as a senior veterinary surgeon.

"They are either attacked by infectious disease, or are being poisoned or starved to death."

With the cause of death still inconclusive, some of the porpoises have been sent to the Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology for further analysis.
 
Wei Baoyu (韦宝玉), the project leader of the WWF in Hunan Province outlines the main threats endangering the river dolphins: ever scarcer food resources, water pollution and dredging that destroys the riverbed where the river dolphins reproduce.

In addition, the increasing use of large barges on the lake is also putting these porpoises, which rely on sonar to navigate, at risk.

Sometime the porpoises can mistake a motor's acoustic waves for those of their fellow dolphins, and get injured or killed by the propeller when they swim too close.

For example, the first two adult porpoises found dead last month were confirmed to have been hit by a vessel's propeller.    

According to Dong Lijun (董黎军), a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology, as the porpoises are a social animal, if one dies, another three of them are threatened.

This implies that although there have only been twelve deaths of the animals up to now, the number of animals threatened is even higher.

"The rapid decline in population means that the number of remaining porpoises are insufficient to allow reproduction to continue. This will inevitably lead to a total extinction," Dong explained.

In 2007, the Whitefin dolphin, another freshwater porpoise that was only found in Yangtze River, was declared functionally extinct.

This leaves the finless porpoise, an even more ancient species than the Yangtze dolphin, as the only remaining mammal in the waters of the Yangtze River.

News in English via World Crunch (link)

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