It's the end of time for a lot of things. The last Great Auk (pictured) was clubbed to death for its highly valuable hide while guarding the last Great Auk egg in the world. The rest of the Great Auks were mostly used for fuel by sailors, until numbers started to get low and people realised that collectors would pay a great deal of money for a Great Auk skin. We like to pretend that we're not so barbaric any more but the truth is, nothing changes.

Ever heard of the Baiji? Sometimes it's called the Yangtze River Dolphin, or the Whitefin Dolphin. Sometimes, when in polite company, it goes by its official name, Lipotes vexillifer. But around home they call it the Baiji, and opinion varies as to how many there are of them left in the world. Some experts say there might be a hundred. Some experts say there might be four. That's four as in "4", not as in "four hundred".

At any rate there is no argument about one thing: the Baiji is the most endangered cetacean (species of whale) in the world today.

The reason for their demise is simple: as more and more people have come to live on the banks of the Yangtze and use its resources, the Baiji (whose eyesight is poor - adapted for the sedimentary waters of the Yangtze, he survives mostly by using his astonishing sonar to locate food and friends), has had a hard time locating either food or friends. Noise levels in the river are enough to deafen him to his own sonar. The pollution levels are so high that, if he is lucky enough to find one of the other three Baiji, and if the one he finds turns out to be a girl and likes the look of him, and if she doesn't starve to death or get stuck in a fishing net or hit by a boat during her pregnancy, they have crookety wee babies which usually fall foul of the Yangtze's passing human river-traffic.

It's no fun.

It may sound as if nobody is doing anything to save the Baiji. This is not the case. Many organisations, both Chinese and International, strive to save these shy, shortsighted creatures. The problems they face are many: the small numbers of surviving Baiji is just one: the vast numbers of human residents along the length of the Yangtze (with little time for Baiji conservation, when set against the conservation of their own livelihoods), is another. Assuming the conservationists saved enough of these dolphins to create a breeding pod - where are they going to live? The Yangtze is far too overpopulated and overpolluted to provide a reasonable home for these creatures, which adapted specifically to live in its murky waters.

Scientists recently worked out that in order to have a genetically sustainable colony of anything, you needed about 160 members of the species. Any less and the genetic diversity of the group suffers, leaving the great-great grandchildren of the first batch prone to defect, disease and malformation. By anyone's reckoning this is news which should make the Baiji's friends suck their teeth and shake their heads. It is too late for these unusual little whales, and we will see what happened to the Great Auk happen again, in our lifetime.

This would be more awful (believe it or not), if it were not for the fact that this happens all the time. The very mundanity of extinction hardens us to the news of another species going under.

Five web-pages into the topic of endangered species and the human brain goes *pop!*: I can take no more! They're ALL going to die horribly!

We do very much the same thing when faced with news of the world's starving.

For this reason I make a very humble suggestion. Look at this list. Or do a search on google to see if there are any plants or animals endangered in your area (you may be surprised). Pick something from it. Not necessarily something fluffy or cute. Not necessarily something nice-natured or cool and scaly. Just something, anything. And make it your own, personal cause. Donate money if you can. If you can't donate money, spread awareness. Bore your friends with it. Do a talk at your school. Put up a crappy web page.

At least let the world know it is losing something.

04/Mar/02