“We are very glad to see baiji still exist in the world,” Wang was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The news comes shortly after China’s leading expert on the baiji, Wang Ding, pronounced the species extinct following a fruitless 38-day search of the Yangtze by an international team of scientists.

At the time expedition members said that a few Baiji may still exist in the murky waters of the Yangtze but that the population is no longer viable and any stragglers will die out within a generation. In other words, the reprieve will likely be short-lived.

Baiji river dolphin

“We have to accept the fact, that the Baiji is functionally extinct. It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world,” said August Pfluger, a noted Baiji expert and head of baiji.org, a group that seeks to protect the dolphin.

The Chinese government has said it will try to capture any remaining baiji for a captive breeding program.

The baiji’s demise

The ultimate demise of the Baiji was caused by pollution, overfishing, boat traffic, and obstructions like dams. Unusually, the dolphin’s decline was not tied to direct harvesting by humans.

When the Baiji is officially declared extinct by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature / World Conservation Union (IUCN) — 50 years after its last recorded sighting — it will be first large aquatic mammal to disappear since the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s. Chinese rivers still support a population of freshwater cetaceans: the endemic Yangtze Finless Porpoise. However, the Baiji survey found less than 400.

“Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second Baiji”, said Wang Ding, deputy director of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Science in Wuhan.

“The loss of such a unique and charismatic species is a shocking tragedy. The Yangtze River dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over twenty million years ago. This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasizes that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet,” said Dr Sam Turvey of the Zoological Society of London and a participant in the six-week search for baiji. “The baiji’s extinction also highlights the need for new conservation initiatives in China’s increasingly threatened Yangtze ecosystem, which is also home to endangered freshwater porpoises, seven-metre long fish, giant salamanders and white Siberian cranes.”