White Baiji Dolphin Now (Functionally) Extinct.

Apparently humans have (effectively) killed off another species:

The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and nearly blind, dates back some 20 million years. Its disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.

A few baiji may still exist in their native Yangtze habitat in eastern China but not in sufficient numbers to breed and ward off extinction, said August Pfluger, the Swiss co-leader of the joint Chinese-foreign expedition.

"We have to accept the fact that the Baiji is functionally extinct. We lost the race," Pfluger said in a statement released by the expedition. "It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China,
but for the entire world. We are all incredibly sad."

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this is really sad i hate it when things like this happen ! it puts a downer on my day,im not even what you would class as a total animal lover but i think this is so terrible to happen while we are alive.
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I don't know why you are happy about the extinction of a species of dolphins. I am outraged. I view this as a communist attack on the environment and think we should all demand an explanation from the chinese immediately.
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This is very sad. I am ashamed, and I hope those involved in the extinction are too.

Er, S. Bahl: "Communist attack on the environment"? Please, tell us you're joking.
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Things go extinct all the time. Is there some shock that a blind, shy dolphin goes extinct? We need things that don't work to go extinct! It's part of evolution.
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Moon - Perhaps the reason you are not saddened by this loss is because it is, as you say, "happening all the time", at an alarming rate: http://www.raintree-health.co.uk/data/green/greenimages/rateof.jpg

So much extinction is NOT part of evolution (er - not part of natural evolution, unless mass extinction is occurring), and each loss should be treated with regret and move us to change some things. The popular opinion on a species dying out seems to be "since they didn't do anything for us, who cares?", when the species is actually a crucial part of increasingly fragile ecosystems. This attitude must end! Stop the earth from becoming homogenized!
As humans, we rarely take the time to try and understand why something exists, before it is too late to protect it. Other species matter, too. Mother Earth is not stupid - she had something in mind during the evolution of the "baiji".

Sorry, but I feel very strongly about this.
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I have to agree with Moon. I don't like to see animals hurt, but it's still all part of the greater evolution of things. The weak make way for the strong. It's always been this way and always will be.
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I agree with Moon also.
95% of all species that ever lived on this planet are now extinct, and humans didn't even exists we the first 94% went away for good.
@Jenny: a graph showing no extinctions before 1900? Why is that? Is it because there were no extinctions before 1900, or is it because the data on extinction wasn't being collected back then?
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oh the irony, ow it hurt so bad, just looking down the page a bit of the mongolian or chineese man saving 2 dolphins...... guess some dolphins are worth more than others
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Sorry, #10 Alex, my graph sucked. What I was trying to convey, a la Wikipedia, was: "Prior to the dispersion of humans across the earth, extinction was a purely natural phenomenon that generally occurred at a continuous low rate (mass extinctions being relatively rare events). Starting approximately 100,000 years ago, and coinciding with an increase in the numbers and range of humans, species extinctions have increased to a rate unprecedented since the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event."
I know that 95 percent of species that lived on the planet are now extinct! Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset because cute fuzzy animals are dying. I'm upset because the ebb and flow of nature has been stretched past its limits, and this is not good for Earth, not good for other species-- heck, it's not good for us. And there is no fixing this problem, unlike other human-wrought environmental changes; once a species is gone, it is gone forever.
Perhaps I'm not mature enough to form my arguments clearly enough (I'm still a teenager), but I hope I'm making sense.
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