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Loading...What’s Killing China’s Rare River Porpoises? (Video)
“River pig” is the Chinese name for the freshwater porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), an endangered species. China’s official news service Xinhua says that, in the past month and a half, twelve of the animals (including a pregnant one) have been found dead in Dongting Lake in south-central Hunan province. Six dead porpoises have also been found in Poyang Lake in the eastern province of Jiangxi.
Scientists are predicting that the porpoises, which have lived in the Yangtze River and nearby lakes for 20 million years, could become extinct in the next decade and a half.
It is a terrifying testament about how three decades of unbridled economic growth have taken a shocking toll on China’s environment and wildlife. Wang Kexiong, a researcher at China’s Institute of Hydrobiology , says that a combination of water pollution — toxic waste from factories and farms have contaminated many of China’s waterways — as well as shipping, sand dredging and illegal fishing are all culprits, according to Agence France-Presse via Raw Story.
Climate change has also been pointed to, as water levels have fallen with changing climate patterns and caused the porpoises’ food supplies to decrease. Local fishermen have asked if water pollution might be a reason, noting that they routinely see dead fish and other aquatic animals in the water.
This video shows the river porpoise in an aquarium in Wuhan:
Only 1,200 river porpoises were estimated to be alive in 2006, the year in which another species, the Baiji (a freshwater dolphin native to the Yangtze River area) was declared extinct. Only 65 freshwater porpoises have been counted in Dongting Lake and 300-400 in Poyang Lake this year.
Yueyang city near Dongting Lake has called for an investigation. But it also seems high time for China to step up its lax environmental regulations, to preserve what remains of its wildlife whose survival is more and more threatened every day in the water and on the land.
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Read more: cetacean, china, dolphin, endangered species, extinct-species, porpoise, river dolphin, river porpoise
Screenshot of a river porpoise in captivity from a video uploaded by Baiji Foundation via YouTube
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+ add your ownThank you for sharing.
noted
:/
EARTH CRY video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jppmMcjgWS0
Mah....vedremo....
It seems a though the Chinese are making the same mistakes we, in the west, made during our industrial revolution (and in some respects, still make today). Who was it who said, "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history".
It would be nice if this was a wakeup call to China and they started cleaning up their rivers, lakes, ponds, air, and land. We'll see...
The majority of Chinese "medicine" still uses tiger bone, and bear gall bladders to help in the male populations erection disfunctions........ You think such a "backward" people care about animals or their environment?
........................Humans
Great, another species endangered story...........is it me or am I really reading this type of story on a weekly basis?
Way to go humans......I hope you're proud of yourselves. Personally I'm ashamed to be of the same species that is decidedly destroying each and every other species on this planet.
Human beings are stewards of this earth and we are responsible for protecting the species that share our environment. We are doing a horrible job.
"As we hurtle towards poisoning our entire planet, arrogant human beings should remember we are a fellow animal and their fate is ours. Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught…only then will you find money cannot be eaten"
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