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organizations that have tended to prioritize conservation efforts on such charismatic animals
(cf. Leader-Williams & Dublin, 2000; Entwistle & Stephenson, 2000). How then was it
possible for a species of river dolphin to become extinct when it should have been the focus
of intensive international conservation attention and activity?
Most of the remaining obligate and facultative dolphins and porpoises are also highly
threatened by intensive anthropogenic pressures, and these species are regarded as among the
world's most threatened mammals (Perrin et al., 1989; Reeves et al., 2000, 2003; Jefferson &
Smith, 2002). In particular, species and populations of freshwater cetaceans found in other
Asian river systems (Ganges River dolphin
Platanista
[
gangetica
]
gangetica
; Indus River
dolphin
Platanista
[
gangetica
]
minor
; Yangtze finless porpoise
Neophocaena phocaenoides
asiaeorientalis
; Irrawaddy dolphin
Orcaella brevirostris
) are all classified as Endangered or
Critically Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2008). It
is therefore imperative to identify the key lessons that can be learned from the history of
Chinese and international attempts to conserve the baiji, and the ultimate failure of these
attempts to prevent the extinction of this species. In particular, it is necessary to consider
whether conservation efforts for the baiji were hindered by unique and insurmountable
theoretical and/or practical challenges associated with the specific ecology of river dolphins,
river systems, and associated threat processes, or whether the lack of successful conservation
action resulted instead from institutional failure to implement a feasible recovery program.
C
ONSERVATION
C
ONCERN
,
L
EGISLATION AND
A
CTION
Although scientific research was effectively halted in China during the 1960s and 1970s,
investigations into the ecology, distribution and status of the baiji commenced shortly after
the end of the Cultural Revolution (Zhou et al., 1977). By the end of the 1970s, researchers
and officials at a number of Chinese institutions had already become aware of the threatened
status of the baiji, and were planning active measures to conserve the species (Pilleri, 1979).
In addition to ongoing scientific research from 1978 into baiji biology directed by the
Coordination Group on Lipotes Research (Chen 1981; see e.g. Perrin et al., 1989; Chen et al.,
1997; Chen, 2007), a series of surveys were conducted in the main Yangtze channel during
the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to monitor the remaining baiji population, although the wide
variation in methodology employed between different surveys (e.g. distance surveyed,
number of boats and observers, height of observers above water, boat speed, correction
factors) made it difficult to identify meaningful population trends over time before the baiji
population was critically low (Zhou et al., 1994; Zhang et al., 2003; Braulik et al., 2005;
Turvey et al., 2007). The baiji was listed in the Key Protected List of the Aquatic Resources
Regulation in 1979, and on the First Category of the List of National Protected Wild Animals
(State Key Protected Wildlife List) in 1989, for which hunting is strictly prohibited (Zhou et
al., 1994; Sheng, 1998b). Additional protective legislation is also officially in place, such as
the ‗Baiji and Yangtze Finless Porpoise Protection Act' drafted by the Institute of
Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and approved by the Chinese Ministry of
Agriculture in 2001 (Dudgeon, 2005). Rolling hook long-lines, dynamite fishing, poison
fishing, electro-fishing, and fixed fyke nets were all banned in the main Yangtze channel due
to recognition of the threats that these methods posed to baiji through incidental mortality,
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