Yangtze River Porpoise Falls Prey To 800 Million Tons of Waste Per Year

Contributing Monkie

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Published on June 28, 2008

Section G Living, Green Report / Media, Nature / Non Human Stories

Comment 1

yangtze river porpoise 011 Yangtze River Porpoise Falls Prey To 800 Million Tons of Waste Per Year

Not sure what concerns me more: the sad, seemingly hopeless plight of the Yangtze River Porpose or the fact that in China, this beautiful animal is referred to as the “river pig”.

Obviously, I’m more concerned about the former. Especially after reading a study published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, which reveals that “the Yangtze River Porpoise, the only freshwater finless porpoise in existence, is in danger of becoming extinct”. The porpoise, which lives in the mid to lower reaches of the Yangtze and in the Poyang and Dongting lakes, is feared to soon suffer the same fate as the “baiji” or Yangtze River Dolphin. The cause of the encroaching extinction can be attributed to high concentrations of man-made chemicals found in the tissue samples of this aquatic mammal.

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Yangtze Turtles Need To Hook Up

Contributing Monkie

Topics of Interest , ,

Published on June 4, 2008

Section Green Report / Media, Nature / Non Human Stories

yangtze turtles 01 Yangtze Turtles Need To Hook Up

It’s a twist on the standard doomed love story: instead of two beings desperately wanting to be together who shouldn’t, we have two beings who desperately need to hook up but probably won’t. For ridiculous reasons.

For once, abstinence has dire consequences.

It’s bad enough that China had to say goodbye to the Yangtze River dolphin last year when the species was declared extinct. But without immediate action, the fate of the Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle will be the same.

The Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle is considered to be one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world. It is characterized by a wide, flat shape, leathery carapace (shell), and a deep head with a pig-like snout. Normally found in large river systems — specifically the Yangtze River in eastern China — they are, as of this writing, the rarest turtle in the world. The severity of their situation was first brought to light in the early 1990s, and in 2004 it was believed only six turtles remained.

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