Two endangered Chinese finless porpoises found dead in Yangtze River as species struggles for survival
- Remains of two of river’s estimated 1,012 porpoises found in less than a week
Two endangered finless porpoises have been found dead in the Yangtze River in the space of a week, according to mainland Chinese media reports.
One was found on Monday in Jiayu county, central Hubei province, four days after the remains of another were recovered from Dongting Lake, a tributary of the Yangtze in central Hunan province, news website Thepaper.cn reported.
The Dongting Lake carcass was tied with a rope and weighted with bricks, and authorities in Hunan said the creature became tangled in a fishing net. The Hubei death is under investigation.
The Yangtze’s finless porpoises are “extremely endangered”, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a 2016 action plan to protect the species. Last year, vice-minister Yu Kangzhen said surveys showed there were about 1,012 of the animals in the river.
In 2017, China raised its protection for the mammals to its highest level because of the critical dangers they faced. Experts said that as the river’s “flagship” species, the porpoise was an indicator for the Yangtze’s ecology.
The porpoise discovered in Hubei was small and it had suffered superficial wounds, investigators were quoted as saying. They estimated that it was found soon after its death.