THE Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji, is the first cetacean to disappear as a result of human activities. On 12 September the World Conservation Union (IUCN) is likely to classify the dolphin as “possibly extinct”.
The proposed listing follows a six-week expedition that failed to find a single specimen. Two boats travelled independently up and down the river in November and December 2006, looking for the dolphin and using hydrophones to listen for its .
“The expedition became crushingly depressing as it proceeded,” says Samuel Turvey of the Zoological Society of London, whose team reports its negative results in …
