The Baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, is now teetering on the edge of oblivion, according to the latest studies.

Thousands of species, including the common hippopotamus, are to be added or moved up the so-called "red list" drawn up by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
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One of the creatures predicted to die out is the Yangtze River dolphin or Baiji. It is thought that just 30 remain and that the chances of breeding-age pairs meeting is extremely low.

Chris Butler-Stroud of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said the animal was effectively extinct.

I remember reading about these creatures in Douglas Adams' (he of the delightful Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series) Last Chance to See, wherein he and a BBC film crew go to visit the rarest creatures on earth. On the trip into China (then a much-different place than now), they're greeted with a banquet at which the central dish is the river dolphin they've come to study. The chef thought it appropriate, the guests of honor less so.

Anyway, the upshot of that book was that the river dolphin had a very acute sense of hearing, which turned out to be a major setback in the Yangtze after the invention of the boat motor. It's one of the busiest waterways in the world, making the river dolphin one of the world's most confused animals.

They weren't mentioned by most of the Three Gorges tour guides where we were -- only the Chinese sturgeons came up as something they were hoping to protect. Apparently, the dams along the Yangtze are part of the problem, as far as the dolphins are concerned.

Here's a pdf file describing some of the efforts back in 1993 to save this creature. They don't seem to have panned out. Too bad -- there are accounts about as old as the New Testament describing the Yangtze River dolphin. Once, they were a common sight in the Three Gorges area and held in high regard by local fishermen. Nowadays, there aren't enough to count. They can't even find each other.