Chinese River Dolphin Declared Extinct (International)

I, Ben Tan, am honoured to be the first to have his report published on The Alternative. I have been asked to do a report on the extinction of Chinese River Dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer).

As of 13 December 2006, this mammal has been declared "functionally extinct". For the 99% of you who don't understand what that means, it means that there is too little of that spieces to play a significant role in the ecosystem.

Due to pollution, overfishing and loss of habitat of the Yangtze River, the numbers of the animal dropped from 6,000 in the 1950s to 7 in 1998.

I know what you all are thing; who gives a hoot! Even though this is the first mammal to be declared extinct in decades, nobody cares. In fact, this wasn't even published in The Straits Times as a major article. I mean, it is EXTINCTION! Nothing could be worse to a commmunity than that. Kudos to the apathetic!

Ben Tan.