Bidding bye bye to Baiji

The Sunday Indian - India's Greatest News weekly

We might have lost the Yangtze River dolphin for ever!

Just what price are we ready to pay for growth and prosperity? Well, from the way events have unfolded in the not-sodistant Chinese backyard, the answer seems a resounding ‘anything’. To cut a long story short, Baiji or the Yangtze River dolphin, thought to be, until recently, a highly endangered species, has gone ‘functionally’ extinct. What’s appalling, and perhaps ironical, is that the fascinating creature for long regarded as a symbol of peace and prosperity in Chinese tradition and nicknamed – the ‘Goddess of the Yangtze’ has merely been reduced to a mere name.

Hunted for food and skin, and thanks to the rapid growth during the ‘Great Leap Forward’, the Baiji’s days had appeared numbered with experts having sounded alarm bells for the Yangtze dolphins. Unfortunately they’ve been proved right. Even on repeated surveys of the Yangtze not a single Baiji was spotted. So what exactly went wrong? Says Dr. Sandeep Behra, WWF India Dolphin Conservation Project Head, “Over exploitation of the river and construction of dams and barrages has resulted in the Yangtze dolphin’s depletion.” So does that mean the Indian river dolphins could face the same threat too? “In 2005, 1,100 dolphins in the Indus and less than 2,000 in the Ganga were reported. Conservation needs to be taken up seriously, else the fate of our dolphins would not be too different from the Yangtze’s,” asserts Dr. Behra. “In a nutshell, both quantity and quality (river flow & level) are critical for dolphin survival which is affected by the construction of dams and barrages. Being mammals, they are at the top of the aquatic food chain process and their extinction will affect the entire food chain system”. Let’s hope, unlike everything else, we don’t compete with our neighbour on the fate of our dolphins!

Edit bureau: Rahul Chaudhary with inputs from Swati Hora

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

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