WITNESS TO EXTINCTION : HOW WE FAILED TO SAVE THE YANGTZE RIVER DOLPHIN

Zoologist Turvey published a scientific paper in 2007 concluding that the Yangtze River dolphin has become extinct; this anguished chronicle expands on his last-ditch campaign to avert the mammal’s oblivion. As background to his involvement, Turvey recounts the creature’s role in Chinese folk stories, its scientific classification as Lipotes vexillifer in 1918, and estimates of its population. As Chinese zoologists resumed work after the Cultural Revolution, they noted a decline in numbers attributable to industrial degradation of the Yangtze River environment and initiated a captive breeding program. Turvey comments skeptically about the quality of the Chinese program, whose lack of success in the face of imminent extinction mobilized him to impassioned action. In biting terms, Turvey indicts the financial backer of his enterprise as an undependable publicity seeker, and scores, too, a perceived indifference to his grant applications from well-known international conservation groups. Surmounting obstacles, Turvey succeeds in launching his expedition on the Yangtze, a voyage of demoralizing discovery that the dolphins have vanished. Turvey’s work of warning should sting the community of endangered-species organizations. --Gilbert Taylor.

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Witness to Extinction: How We Failed to Save the Yangtze River Dolphin (See all Wildlife Books)