Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
The story of the baiji's decline … needs to be told and re-told.
Reeves et al. (2000: vi)
I
NTRODUCTION
The Yangtze River dolphin or baiji (
Lipotes vexillifer
), an obligate river dolphin (
sensu
Leatherwood & Reeves, 1994) endemic to the mid-lower Yangtze River [Changjiang]
drainage and the neighboring Qiantang River in eastern China, has long been recognized as
one of the world's rarest and most threatened mammal species (Figures 1-2). No meaningful
baiji population estimates are available before the late twentieth century, but using densities
of other river dolphins in areas uncompromised by development as a model, it has been
suggested that the baiji population may have formerly consisted of a few thousand animals
(Zhou et al., 1994). However, the mid-lower Yangtze region has experienced intensive
development driven by extremely high human population densities since the advent of rice
cultivation in the region approximately 7000 years ago (Scott, 1989), and the lowlands of
eastern China lost most of their Holocene large mammal fauna centuries or millennia ago
(Gu, 1989; Elvin, 2004; Wen, 2006). Historical writings spanning at least 2000 years indicate
that baiji were widely hunted, primarily to provide oil for lamps, caulking for boats, and for
the supposed medicinal properties of their blubber and meat, and it has been suggested that
this long history of exploitation had already greatly reduced their numbers before the
twentieth century (Pilleri, 1979; see also Hoy, 1923).
Figure 1. Yangtze River dolphin or baiji (
Lipotes vexillifer
). This animal was shot in February 1914 in
the channel connecting Dongting Lake to the main Yangtze; its head and cervical vertebrae were sent to
the United States National Museum of Natural History, and represent the holotype of the species. From
Hoy (1923).
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