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are reflected in the minimal support for active baiji conservation that was ever provided by
the international conservation community.
Despite the apparent commitment expressed to the baiji by several major conservation
organizations (e.g. Ellis, 2005), and frequent insistences that it was a ‗popular' species
dominating conservation resources (see Turvey, 2008), nearly all of the international funding
that was ever made available for baiji conservation was restricted to supporting passive
survey work, meetings and workshops, awareness-raising campaigns, and infrastructural
improvements at the dolphinarium of the Institute of Hydrobiology (Chen & Liu, 1992) rather
than active implementation of the proposed ex situ recovery program . However, while
surveys have provided invaluable data on baiji abundance, ecology and decline, in themselves
they were unable to save the species from extinction; and even Chinese researchers
recognized that whereas community education may well have helped save some baiji, the
overall trend of small and decreasing numbers was not likely to be reversed by public
awareness alone (Zhou et al., 1998). Although establishing a viable baiji breeding population
at Tian'e-Zhou represented a major conservation challenge, the lack of success in capturing
sufficient numbers of baiji from the main Yangtze channel and the human-wildlife conflicts
and problems with maintaining cetaceans at the reserve could undoubtedly have been
substantially addressed by increased international assistance. For example, the series of six
two-three month baiji capture attempts conducted between 1993 and 1995, which eventually
led to the translocation of a single female baiji to Tian'e-Zhou, were funded and conducted
entirely using in-country finances, equipment and methods; the lack of greater success in
these operations was attributed to the limited number of available boats and personnel (Zhou
et al., 1994), and Chinese researchers reported that they saw other dolphins which they were
unable to catch as they had ‗primitive equipment and not enough manpower' (Liu et al.,
1998). Regularly revised budgets for necessary infrastructural improvements and running
costs for the baiji recovery program (Zhou et al., 1994; Ministry of Agriculture, 2001; Turvey
et al., 2006), whilst far from low, were comparable to those employed in attempts to save
other species of extreme rarity (e.g. Rabinowitz, 1995; Clark, 1997; Groombridge et al.,
2004), and lower than other marine mammal conservation projects which have conversely
been readily funded (Morell, 2008). Whereas financial and logistical support for
implementing the baiji recovery program should also certainly have been more forthcoming
from within China, in the absence of concerted national-level actions for baiji conservation,
the unfortunate unwillingness on the part of western organizations to provide direct financial
assistance, applied skills transfer, capacity-building and associated project support, and/or
international pressure constituted one of the most significant barriers to effective protection of
the species. This factor was even increasingly appreciated by international conservationists
themselves before recognition of the baiji's probable extinction (e.g. Reeves et al., 2000;
Reeves & Gales, 2006).
Whether or not a viable breeding population of baiji could have been established in time
at Tian'e-Zhou, it is crucial to recognize that there were no fundamental obstacles preventing
the implementation of the ex situ baiji recovery program from being considerably further
advanced before the probable extinction of the species was discovered in 2006. However,
international interest in the baiji's plight at the beginning of the twenty-first century was
instead maintained largely through scientific debate over both the possibility and the value of
attempting to preserve this Critically Endangered species rather than concerted efforts to
support active conservation measures (Kleiman, 2006; Reeves & Gales, 2006; Wang et al.,
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