If you’ve been putting off that trip to see China’s “goddess of
the Yangtze,” you’ve waited too long. Scientists believe the
human-sized dolphin to be the first aquatic mammal species to go
extinct in half a century, a victim of China’s economic growth.
The Yangtze River dolphin, one of the world’s rarest mammals, is
no more, a victim of China’s breakneck economic growth and
competition for food with one of the world’s most common large
mammals—human beings. “We can say that the animal is
functionally extinct,” says August Pfluger, head of the Zurich-
based Baiji.org Foundation, which in December co-sponsored a
six-week, 2,000-mile (3,500-km) survey of the Yangtze without
finding a single remaining member of the critically endangered
species. The dolphin, one of only four exclusively freshwater
species in the world, may have the unhappy distinction of being
the first aquatic mammal to go extinct in more than half a
century—and the first large mammal driven into oblivion by
environmental degradation. Nicknamed