Yangtze's 'river pigs' rarer than pandas
Source: AFP |
March 29, 2013, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
China is home to only around 1,000 wild finless porpoises, making the dolphin-like animals which inhabit the country's longest river rarer than the giant panda, a conservation group said yesterday.
With a stubby nose and grey body, the porpoises, known in China as "river pigs," are famed for their "smiling" faces and friendly relations with humans.
But their numbers in the Yangtze River have more than halved in six years, according to an extensive survey.
Scientists spent over a month last year scanning more than 3,400 kilometers of the river in a hunt for the porpoises, but only saw 380, conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature said. Based on that observation, combined with sightings of the porpoises in lakes connected to the river, the total number in the wild was likely to be a little more than 1,000, the WWF said.
That compares to around 1,600 giant pandas in the wild, it said, adding the porpoise could become extinct in 15 years.
The finless porpoise, which unlike the dolphin has a small dorsal ridge rather than a fin, has been hurt by human intrusion and environmental degradation.
"Food shortages and human disturbance such as increased shipping traffic are the major threats," the WWF said, adding that researchers also discovered "traps that could affect finless porpoises."
Waterways in China have become heavily contaminated with toxic waste from factories and farms - pollution blamed on more than three decades of rapid economic growth.
The report said the porpoise population had decreased by 13.73 percent every year, twice the rate reported before 2006.
It estimates there are about 540 finless porpoises in the Poyang and Dongting lakes and 500 in the Yangtze.
According to the WWF report, the porpoises' habitats are isolated and concentrated in certain spots, a harmful trend for the species' reproduction, which depends on seasonal migration.
With a stubby nose and grey body, the porpoises, known in China as "river pigs," are famed for their "smiling" faces and friendly relations with humans.
But their numbers in the Yangtze River have more than halved in six years, according to an extensive survey.
Scientists spent over a month last year scanning more than 3,400 kilometers of the river in a hunt for the porpoises, but only saw 380, conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature said. Based on that observation, combined with sightings of the porpoises in lakes connected to the river, the total number in the wild was likely to be a little more than 1,000, the WWF said.
That compares to around 1,600 giant pandas in the wild, it said, adding the porpoise could become extinct in 15 years.
The finless porpoise, which unlike the dolphin has a small dorsal ridge rather than a fin, has been hurt by human intrusion and environmental degradation.
"Food shortages and human disturbance such as increased shipping traffic are the major threats," the WWF said, adding that researchers also discovered "traps that could affect finless porpoises."
Waterways in China have become heavily contaminated with toxic waste from factories and farms - pollution blamed on more than three decades of rapid economic growth.
The report said the porpoise population had decreased by 13.73 percent every year, twice the rate reported before 2006.
It estimates there are about 540 finless porpoises in the Poyang and Dongting lakes and 500 in the Yangtze.
According to the WWF report, the porpoises' habitats are isolated and concentrated in certain spots, a harmful trend for the species' reproduction, which depends on seasonal migration.
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