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more research in the areas of rearing biology, breeding biology, physiology, behavior and
acoustics can be carried out in captive animals to help conservation in the wild. After a
sustainable group is established in captivity, we may establish an exchange program of
individuals of the porpoise between captive and off site protected populations, even wild
ones.
For effectively protecting the baiji and the porpoise, a network that is composed by
governmental administrations, reserves, and research institutions was just organized by the
Ministry of Agriculture of China and Institute of Hydrobiology, CAS. It is our hope that this
network promotes conservation efforts concerning the baiji and porpoise by serving as a
platform to exchange information, train staff, organize surveys, and educate the public.
We have to point out that most of the measures we proposed above have been repeated
for many times in workshops, published papers and reports to the government, but they have
received little attention and little progress has been made for carrying them out. Most of the
threats are still present and at least some of them are getting worse. Under the pressure of
rapid economic development, perhaps the best thing for the government to do could be to
seek a balance between development and conservation. But, development almost always
comes as a priority when there is conflict between them in a developing country like China.
In this type of situation, no matter what research-based conservation suggestions are put
forward, conservation results will likely be limited and most likely will be nothing more than
―conservation on paper‖ (for example, see Bearzi, 2007). Will of government agencies and
care and support of public are the two keys for any possible success of any conservation
program. Eventually, we have to ask ourselves if we are prepared to lose one more mammal
species in the Yangtze River. Are we? The Yangtze finless porpoise may be the only one left
in the river since we may have already lost the baiji. Can we really afford the cost of losing
them and eventually the whole biodiversity of the river? Our hope is that the international
community has learned a lesson from the baiji tragedy and will react accordingly (in post-
haste) to remediate the Yangtze River, save and improve its biodiversity, and protect the
finless porpoise.
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of this paper is supported by National Basic Research Program of China
(2007CB411600), National Natural Science Foundation of China (30730018), and the
President's Fund of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
R
EFERENCES
[1]
Akamatsu T., Wang D., Nakamura K. & Wang K. (1998). Echolocation range of
captive and free-ranging baiji (
Lipotes vexillifer
), finless porpoise (
Neophocaena
phocaenoides
), and bottlenose dolphin (
Tursiops truncatus
).
Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America,
104, 2511-2516.
[2]
Akamatsu T., Wang D., Wang K., Li S., Dong S., Zhao X., Barlow J., Stewart B. &
Richlen M., (2008). Estimation of the detection probability for Yangtze finless
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