There was even a factory established for the sole purpose of making handbags and gloves out of Yangtze river dolphin skin.
Second – and this is even worse in many ways – the Yangtze river dolphin was as much a victim of incompetence, indecision and apathy as it was of environmental deterioration. It could have been saved, but insufficient funding, poor planning and incessant bickering among conservationists, scientists and the Chinese authorities meant it never really stood a chance.
A proper rescue plan for the Yangtze river dolphin was first mooted in the mid-1980s and consistently advocated until the day the last dolphin died.
The idea was simple: to capture some of the last survivors and move them to the relative safety of a 21-kilometre (12-mile) long, 2-kilometre (1.24-mile) wide oxbow lake called Tian’ezhou, in Hubei province. Right alongside the Yangtze River, the lake already had healthy fish stocks and a thriving population of finless porpoises (which were introduced from the river in the early 1990s). It was perfect. The dolphins would have loved the place and there is every chance they would have flourished and bred.
But it’s one thing having a plan on paper, quite another putting it into action. Admittedly, a female was caught and relocated to Tian’ezhou in 1995, but she was found dead seven months later, entangled in the escape-prevention net at the outlet of the reserve.
One issue was money and, undoubtedly, it would have been an expensive strategy. It required boats to capture the dolphins, helicopters to transfer them, holding pens and veterinary staff to care for them before they could be released into the semi-natural reserve, a proper inventory – and management – of fish stocks, and round-the-clock protection.
But the dolphins should have been an international conservation priority. The fact that sufficient funding was never forthcoming is absolutely, utterly inexcusable.
Then there was the bickering. Can you believe it? Instead of taking urgent and decisive action, everyone argued about the pros and cons of moving the dolphins out of the main river for safekeeping. So many years were wasted that we lost the only real hope of saving the species from extinction.
From as many as 5,000 or 6,000 dolphins in the 1950s, the population shrank to around 400 by 1980, then 200 to 300 by 1985, and by the time Douglas and I arrived in 1988 it was down to fewer than 200.
The Yangtze river dolphin, or baiji – now officially extinct.
Alarm bells don’t ring much louder than that. Yet despite all the warnings, efforts to save the Yangtze river dolphin from extinction came far too little, too late.
Ten years later there were just thirteen left.
The last authenticated sightings in the wild were of a stranded pregnant female found in 2001 and a live animal photographed in 2002.
There was an intensive six-week search just before Christmas 2006. The survey, by professional and well-intentioned researchers from China, Japan, the US, Switzerland and the UK, used two vessels operating independently and covered the entire historical range of the species. They went up and down the Yangtze – not just once, but twice – looking through high-powered binoculars and listening for telltale squeaks and whistles with high-tech hydrophones.
But they were too late.
The conservation plan could have worked. Even in the shadow of China’s economic boom and burgeoning population, the baiji could have been saved.
But it wasn’t.
I realise it’s easy to point an accusatory finger after the event and, of course, some conservation groups did make a positive contribution. But a surprising number were shouting about the plight of the world’s most endangered large mammal, while doing little or nothing about it. Others withdrew their support because of the enormity of the challenge and the dwindling sense of optimism for the baiji’s future.
It turns my stomach to read their official statements, expressing ‘shock’ and ‘dismay’ at the loss of the species. They should have been hanging their heads in shame. Despite all their workshops, conventions and meetings on the Yangtze river dolphin, many of them were too slow, too cautious and too downright inept to do anything constructive – so they must shoulder a large part of the blame.
Will we learn any lessons from the loss of the baiji? It’s an important question, because there are other endangered species in the Yangtze River that could disappear soon, including everything from the Asian softshell turtle to the smooth-coated otter. In other parts of the world, we should be worrying about two of the baiji’s closest relatives, the Indus and Ganges river dolphins, which face remarkably similar threats and are disappearing fast. And, of course, there is all the other, unrelated wildlife struggling for survival in all corners of the globe.
Sadly, I don’t think we will learn any lessons. I’m not being unduly pessimistic – I’m just trying to be realistic. Without major changes in attitude and political thinking, I believe we will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
It makes me worry. If we can’t save an appealing and charismatic dolphin – one that has lived on earth for more than twenty million years – what can we save?
If we can’t save an appealing and charismatic dolphin, what can we save?
ONE MORE THING …
Our journey has left me with a mind-boggling mishmash of memories and impressions: exactly how much Stephen hates camping, for example, and the astonishing fact that he can learn a new language in just a few weeks.
I’ll never forget meeting Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur in Madagascar, tickling a thirty-tonne grey whale under the chin in Mexico, releasing a bucketful of turtle hatchlings in Borneo, or learning to love chimps in Uganda. Not to mention being ravished by a man-eating kakapo in New Zealand.
But there’s one thing I can’t get out of my mind. Twenty years have passed since my original travels with Douglas Adams – twenty years of rigorous and intensive conservation work, by countless people from all walks of life, costing untold millions of pounds. Yet for all these efforts, the natural world is not really a better place.
Yes, there have been some outstanding success stories and, of course, it’s not all doom and gloom. But my overriding impression – and that of a great many of the people we met working in the field – is that we are slowly, but surely, losing the battle. Don’t get me wrong – I haven’t given up hope. The number of people who have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of gorillas, robins, turtles and lemurs is sufficient cause for optimism. Besides, we must be doing something right, if only because a large number of endangered species haven’t (yet) become extinct.
Obviously, Last Chance to See can hardly be considered a global scientific review. It’s a snapshot of a handful of countries and a few of their endangered animals, picked almost at random by sticking pins in a map. But the title did prove to be frighteningly prophetic. It really was our last chance to see one-quarter of the eight animals on our endangered species wish list. The mere fact that the Yangtze river dolphin and the northern white rhino have become extinct in the last twenty years is utterly shocking.
But it gets worse. If we were to continue the television series, searching for a different endangered animal each week, it would run for 162 years 10 months. And that’s just the endangered animals we know about. Then we’d have to start another series to talk about the ones we don’t.
So far, we have named and described something like 1.29 million different animal species. We know so little about the vast majority of these that the conservation status of only a piddling 2.53 per cent (32,765) has been properly assessed. What we’ve found is that roughly a quarter of these (8,462) are threatened with extinction.
Bear with me, because this is where it gets really alarming. No one knows how many animal species exist on the planet in total, but 15 to 30 million wouldn’t be a bad guess. So if a quarter of them are in trouble – a perfectly reasonable assumption given what we already know – we are left with somewhere between 3.75 and 7.5 million animals threatened with extinction. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that 70 per cent
of all plant species assessed are endangered, too.
The situation seems bad enough when we hear about the kakapo hanging on by a thread, or thousands of whales being killed every year, or chimpanzee numbers in steep decline. But it goes off the scale when we realise that most endangered animals are likely to vanish before we have any idea they existed in the first place.
The point is that we cannot rely on an aye-aye to worry about the wellbeing of an Amazonian manatee, or a mountain gorilla to look out for a whale shark. Only we can do that. And through a combination of indifference, incompetence, ignorance and greed we are failing to do it properly.
There are many reasons. The biggest is the lack of political will. Most politicians either don’t give a damn, or they pay lip service to the environment in return for votes, or they kid themselves (and us) into believing that conservation is painless. Their highly publicised ‘easy solutions’ lull us into a false sense of security – like recycling instead of tackling the real problem of over-packaging, or widening roads rather than improving public transport. Endangered species, in particular, are very low on their list of priorities.
Another reason is a lack of what I call ‘predictive conservation’. We stand by and watch endangered species slide down the slippery slope towards oblivion and fail to act until their situation is so outrageously dire that they’ve almost reached the point of no return.
Take the catastrophic decline of the African lion – a species most of us simply take for granted. Sixty years ago there were half a million in Africa, twenty years ago there were fewer than 200,000, and today there are barely more than 20,000 across the continent. Yet this catastrophic decline seems to be passing the world by unnoticed. I know money is tight, and there are more than enough other animals even closer to extinction, but just how rapidly – and by how much – does a population have to decline before everyone is galvanised into action?
A good definition of a crisis is when you can’t say ‘Not to worry, it’ll be all right in the end.’ Well, it won’t be all right in the end – unless we get off our backsides and do something about it.
Can you imagine a world without lions? Or Amazonian manatees, rhinos, aye-ayes, kakapo, Komodo dragons and blue whales, for that matter?
I can’t.
African lions: taken for granted, but in catastrophic decline.
IT’S A WRAP! LAST CHANCE TO SEE TRAVEL STATISTICS
Kilometres travelled:
145,000
By a motley collection of planes, helicopters, boats, cars, jeeps, buses and mules, as well as on foot (Stephen would argue, incorrectly, that most of it was on foot)
Carbon offset:
World Land Trust
Stephen and Mark donated to one of Mark’s favourite charities
Meals eaten:
379
Socks lost:
17
Languages learnt:
2
Stephen learnt Portuguese and Malay; Mark learnt to leave all the translating to Stephen
Endangered species seen:
5
In the wild: kakapo, aye-aye, komodo dragon and mountain gorilla from the original book; in a research station: Amazonian manatee; plus everything from Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur to blue whale along the way
Endangered species failed to see:
2
Northern white rhino and Yangtze river dolphin, because they are both extinct
New watches bought:
23
All by Stephen
Photographs taken:
27,747
27,104 by Mark and 643 by Stephen
Malaria tablets popped:
224
Arms broken:
1
Weight lost (lbs):
52
Stephen lost an impressive 64lbs, but unfortunately Mark gained 12lbs
Arguments:
½
A mild disagreement about giant jumping rats in Madagascar
LAST CHANCE TO HELP…
Here are some organisations really worth supporting
AMAZONIAN MANATEES
INPA (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia)
Av. André Araújo,
2936,
Aleixo,
CEP 69060-001,
Manaus – AM, Brazil
Tel: + 55 (92) 3643 3377
Emails: [email protected];
[email protected] www.inpa.gov.br
NORTHERN WHITE AND BLACK RHINOS
Save the Rhino International
16 Winchester Walk,
London SE1 9AQ UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7357 7474
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7357 9666
Email: [email protected]
www.savetherhino.org
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation
61 Smithbrook Kilns,
Cranleigh,
Surrey GU6 8JJ,
UK
Tel: + 44 (0) 1483 272323/267924
Fax: + 44 (0) 1483 272427
Email: [email protected]
www.davidshepherd.org
CHIMPANZEES
The Jane Goodall Institute
Orchard House
51–67 Commercial Road,
Southampton SO15 1GG
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 23 8033 5660
Fax: +44 (0) 23 8033 5661
Email: [email protected]
www.janegoodall.org.uk
MOUNTAIN GORILLAS
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
800 Cherokee Ave.,
SE Atlanta, Georgia 30315-1440
USA
Tel: + 1 800 851 0203 + 1 404 624 5881
Fax: + 1 404 624 5999
Email: [email protected]
www.gorillafund.org
The Gorilla Organization
110 Gloucester Avenue
London NW1 8HX,
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7916 4974
Email: [email protected]
www.gorillas.org
AYE-AYE AND OTHER LEMURS
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
Les Augrès Manor La Profonde Rue,
Trinity, Jersey,
Channel Islands JE3 5BP, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1534 860000
Fax: +44 (0) 1534 860001
www.durrell.org
KAKAPO
The Kakapo Recovery Programme
c/- PO Box 631 Wellington 6140
New Zealand
Email: [email protected]
www.kakaporecovery.org.nz
KOMODO DRAGONS
Komodo Survival Program
Jl Pulau Moyo,
Komplek Karantina Blok 2 no 4,
Denpasar, Bali 80222,
Indonesia
Tel: +62 (361) 7420434
Fax: +62 (361) 710352
Email: [email protected]
komodosurvival.kbproject.org
BLUE WHALES
Environmental Flying Services
5900 South Camino de la Tierra Tucson,
Arizona 85746
USA
Tel: +1 520 578-5610
Email: [email protected]
www.eflying.org
(please specify donations are for blue whales)
Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
Brookfield House
38 St Paul Street
Chippenham
Wiltshire SN15 1LJ
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1249 449500
Fax: +44 (0) 1249 449501
Email: [email protected]
www.wdcs.org
SHARKS
Shark Trust
4 Creykes Court
The Millfields
Plymouth
Devon PL1 3JB
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1752 672008
Email: [email protected]
www.sharktrust.org
RAINFORESTS
The World Land Trust
Blyth House
<
br /> Bridge Street
Halesworth
Suffolk IP19 8AB
UK
Tel (UK only): 0845 054 4422
Tel (international callers): +44 (0) 1986 874422
Fax: +44 (0) 1986 874425
Email: [email protected]
www.worldlandtrust.org
CORAL REEFS
Coral Cay Conservation
1st floor Block 1 Elizabeth House
39 York Rd
London SE1 7NQ
UK
Tel: + 44 (0) 20 7620 1411
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7921 0469
Email: [email protected]
www.coralcay.org
INDEX
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. You can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
Entries in italics indicate photographs.
Adams, Douglas, 6–7, 7, 9, 13–15, 13, 14, 15, 18, 26, 27, 54, 70, 73, 79, 83, 101, 120, 123, 124, 125, 135, 144–5, 188, 190, 196, 202, 207, 224, 232–3, 253, 306, 308, 312
Ajarova, Lilly, 93–4, 97, 99
Amazon, 16–67, 175
aerial view of, 22
dam building in, 58
dangers of, 20–2, 23
destruction of, 54, 55, 58
‘emergent layer’, 51
Europeans first arrive in, 53
fishing in, commercial, 58
getting around in, 40
height of trees in, 50–1
indigenous people in, 53
jungle canopy, 51–2
missionaries in, 53
rainfall in, 43, 44
river, 23, 34, 34, 36, 37
size of, 23, 50, 51
swimming in, 34, 35, 36, 37
unexplored areas of, 24, 28, 53
variety of species within, 23–4
wildlife in see under individual
species name
Amazon Theatre (opera house), 29, 29
anacondas, 34
Analamazaotra (Perinet), 150, 151, 152, 154
Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, 152
Antainambalana River, 124, 136
Last Chance to See Page 30
