Dolphin Species Goes Extinct Due to Humans

[VoodooJoint]

"The Yangtze River dolphin is now almost certainly extinct" Here's the story Dolphin Species Goes Extinct Due to Humans - Yahoo! News

[jilovecavies]

This is horrible. It reminds me of the plight of the Manatees, one of my favorite animals.

*sigh*

[JarBax]

I read about this today too. It is heartbreaking.

[envisionary333]

It's a true tragedy. I can't even imagine all the animals that will go extinct unnoticed, never before seen or named, passing us by without us ever knowing what we've lost. And as global warming begins to rear it's ugly head, we are bound to lose many more- I've heard estimates in the range of a third to half of all species dying out. Sometimes I wish it was the humans that would die out instead so the planet could begin to recover.

[Carissa]

Its horrible to think a whole species can die out and nobody even notices till its too late.

[landhermie]

This scares me a tiny bit:

It's a relic species, more than 20 million years old, that persisted through the most amazing kinds of changes in the planet," said marine biologist Barbara Taylor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service. "It's been here longer than the Andes Mountains have been on Earth."

That means that many more species won't be able to survive from humans. I believe that if not stopped somehow, humans will destroy this world.

[kavykrazy]

In the course of the planet evolving, many species have come and gone. But this is worse because a single species caused it. Not some natural event that wiped out masses at a time. Even more disturbing, it was known to be endangered, but not much was done to prevent it from going extinct.

[envisionary333]

It's very true that there have been many massive extinctions in the history of the planet's evolution, extinctions of as much as 90% of all life on the face of the earth. More animals die out than survive, and I think that's a little known fact. However, it is very different now because we are the root cause instead of the massive climate and ecological changes that caused extinctions in the past. I find it rather interesting when people try to rehabilitate a species to it's "natural habitat" by unnaturally reinforcing it's survival. Is this a good thing, really? How is it any more natural than the extinctions that follow our gradual overtaking of all of the earth's resources? Where do we draw the line on what is "natural" anyway? If we have screwed up the whole system so thoroughly, does it make sense to try to protect and unnaturally repopulate every species that begins to suffer? Should we be taking wild animals in to breed them, house them in a false environment, then put them back out in the wild? Should we be capturing and tracking them? Should we be killing any "unnatural" predators that infiltrate the same habitat? How can we possibly expect our efforts to restore the natural balance that used to exist? Perhaps we can temporarily bring one species back up to its previous population, but what about the infinite other environmental changes that have taken place and the infinite interrelationships that have been permanently altered?

Sorry, I get a little carried away with this. I find it morally and intellectually perplexing to ponder what the best approach is for saving endangered species. As an animal lover and someone with a deep respect for the breadth and complexity of life forms on this planet, I want each and every one to survive and evolve towards even more phenomenal creatures into the distant future. At the same time, I know that as much as we try to help, we cannot retrace our steps and undo our influences. They already permeate the path of every living creature on this earth.

[aqh88]

"Extinct" River Dolphin Spotted in China

WWF | Newsroom

[wheeky-UK]

It is such a waste to see so many beautiful creatures succumb to our own overpopulation. Spreading ourselves out and pushing our animal neighbours aside. I fear that we are too late to save many endangered species but hopefully we will start to learn and adapt from our previous mistakes.

[TrekkiePiggies]

Every single day, 30 species go extinct. It's not just the macrofauna and fuzzy, photogenic panda bears, it's the microfauna that are at the worst risk: ants that live symbiotically with rare plants, fungi that cannot survive except in certain vanishing habitats, the parasites that live off of of other endangered species...