Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer)

I seem to be on an aquatic animal kick here, so I've decided to finish out the month with just aquatic creatures. The Baiji is a freshwater dolpin that lives in the Yangtze River in China, in Chinese it's called 白鱀豚; báijìtún) Nicknamed "Goddess of the Yangtze", the dolphin is also called Chinese River Dolphin, Yangtze River Dolphin, Whitefin Dolphin and Yangtze Dolphin. In 1997, the Guinness Book of World Records labeled the Baiji as the world’s most endangered cetacean when only 13 were sighted after a mass search was conducted. In 2006, the Baiji was declared extinct, after a six week search was made of the Yangtze river with no Baiji were sighted. Since then, in 2007, there was one unconfirmed sighting of a Baiji in the river. Although it is likely there are one or two Baiji left in the river, for all intents and purposes the Baiji is now 'functionally extinct' as there are no longer enough individuals for there to be a sustainable breeding population. If the Baiji really is extinct, then it would be the first cetacean to become extinct directly due to human influence.

The Baiji became extinct because it lives in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. Many individuals were hunted during the Great Leap Forward when the Baiji was no longer considered sacred, would get caught in fishing gear, injured by electric fishing, or collide with boats and propellers (the animals are nearly blind and see through sonar, but can become disoriented from boat noise pollution.) Also, in the 1990s the Chinese government started building the Three Gorges Dam, a massive hydroelectric dam which has displaced over a million people, and destroyed some of the Baiji's natural habitat.