A little under a year ago, I blogged that the Baiji, or Yangtzi River Dolphin was extinct. Well, I’m extremely happy to report that we may have been a little premature in writing them off. The BBC is now reporting that earlier this month, a Chinese fisherman saw and filmed what was most likely a Baiji swimming near the surface, and jumping from the water several times.

Even if this is confirmed as a live Baiji, it doesn’t mean that there’s a viable wild breeding population. In fact it’s quite unlikely, but it raises some hope that enough live specimens might yet be found to establish a captive breeding program, which could yet bring them back from the very brink of extinction.

If this teaches us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t be too quick to write off any species as extinct, just because we can’t see them. As the man said; “life finds a way.”

AP is reporting that after a depressingly rapid decline, the Baiji, or White Dolphin, of the Yangtze River has succumbed to a combination of overfishing, habitat destruction and heavy river traffic (which interfered with the animal’s sonar.)

The report is not unexpected (Baiji have been on the brink for years now,) but it is a sombre moment; this is a large mammalian species (the first in my lifetime) that has been driven to extinction by human activity. It’s hard to believe that an animal that had a viable breeding population in the 1980’s should have disappeared entirely. They were present recently enough that we have high resolution digital photos of them, websites about them, the ability to communicate their demise (and unsuccessfully attempt to forestall it) across the entire world in seconds, and yet, somehow, we let the creatures themselves slip through our fingers. That speaks of dubious priorities to me.

Let’s just hope that we, as a species, can learn from our mistakes.

And, yes, I thought of the obvious title, but John Lynch beat me to it.