Animals and plants burst into life in spring across China, but the finless porpoise, one of the most iconic and endangered creatures in the country, did not have a good time.
　　From March 3 to April 18, 12 finless porpoises were reported dead in the Dongting Lake in central China’s Hunan Province, the country’s second largest freshwater lake in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Fishery authorities of Yueyang, located adjacent to the lake, confirmed six deaths between April 9 and 15 alone.
　　“To my knowledge, never before have so many dead finless porpoises been found in such a short period,” said Xu Yaping, President of the Yueyang Finless Porpoise Protection Association. The non-government organization that Xu heads was set up on January 8 to conserve the species.
　　“This indicates that finless porpoises in the lake are rapidly approaching extinction,”Xu warned.
　　The finless porpoise, also known as the river pig, has lived in the Yangtze River, China’s longest waterway, and nearby lakes for more than 25 million years. With a round smiley face and an intelligence level comparable to that of a gorilla, the animal is adored and respected by local people.
　　After the white Yangtze River dolphin, another freshwater dolphin subspecies only found in the Yangtze River, was declared “functionally extinct” in 2007, the finless porpoise became the last surviving mammal in the river. Scientists say that it is even rarer than the giant panda.
　　 Recent mortalities
　　The recent slew of finless porpoise deaths was first reported on March 3, when two were found dead, one with an unborn baby. They were said to have been killed by boat propellers. Experts say that finless porpoises have poor eyesight, relying on their sonar echolocation system to search for food. These systems might be disrupted by passing boats, leading to collisions and accidental deaths.
　　According to Xu, in the week starting on April 9, other finless porpoise deaths were successively reported in the Dongting Lake. April 14 was a particularly dark day, when three dead adult porpoises were recorded.
　　At 2 p.m. on April 14, Xu got a report from a local restaurant owner saying that the body of a dead porpoise had been spotted. Xu arrived at the scene an hour later, and found the badly decomposed carcass of a 1.63-meter-long female porpoise.
　　At 4 p.m., a local fisherman called in to report another death. It was a 1.3-meter-long female porpoise with a bulging abdomen, which, a later autopsy revealed had contained a nine-month-old, 55-cm-long baby. The baby was two months away from birth. Xu received the news of one more dead finless porpoise at 6:45 p.m.
　　Twelve deaths in succession have significantly reduced the finless porpoise population in the Dongting Lake. A survey report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) this January said that there were between 1,200 and 1,500 Yangtze finless porpoises in the Yangtze River, with 85 in the Dongting Lake and 300 to 400 in the Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province’s largest freshwater lake.
　　The finless porpoise population in the Yangtze River is estimated to dwindle at an annual rate of 5-10 percent. Experts say that the species will vanish in 15 years if no effective measures are taken.
　　But the species’ fate might be even gloomier than the data suggests.
　　“Although 12 deaths were reported, past experiences suggest that there might be more dead finless porpoises that have not been found,” Xu said. “Some studies show that for each body discovered, it is likely that there are actually four deaths.”
　　 Possible causes
　　To identify the causes of the finless porpoises’death, Xu organized a team to conduct postmortem examinations. The team consisted of Xie Yongjun, an experienced veterinarian, and other volunteer doctors.
　　The team examined three bodies. “There were no fatal wounds on surface and there was no food residue found in their digestive system,”Xie said.
　　He reckoned that 10 of the 12 finless porpoises were either killed by an infectious disease, poisoned, or starved to death.
　　Li Tianhuai, a fishery official in Yueyang, suspected that the finless porpoises were killed by pesticides sprayed at the lakefront to exterminate blood flukes, a parasite that causes infections among people in spring.
　　Organizations sprayed the area with pesticides and rainwater might have washed the chemicals into the lake, jeopardizing the porpoises, Li said. He added that after such pesticides were sprayed in 2004, six finless porpoises were found dead within a month.
　　But the Animal Husbandry and Fishery Bureau of Hunan Province said that the Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology examined two of the three finless porpoise bodies it received on April 17, and found one finless porpoise was killed by a propeller, while the cause of death of the other could not be determined.
　　Wei Baoyu, a project leader of the WWF in Hunan, said the major factors endangering the Yangtze porpoises are scarce food resources, river traffic, water pollution, and dredging activities that destroy their habitats and their breeding grounds.
　　He Daming, a member of the Yueyang Finless Porpoise Protection Association and a fisherman for more than three decades, said that finless porpoises’ food resources have been depleted by overfishing, especially from unsustainable fishing methods such as electrofishing. These illegal fishing methods, according to him, not only deprive finless porpoises of food, but may also hurt finless porpoises and harm their reproductive ability.
　　Wei warned that the plight of finless porpoises might serve as a barometer of the Yangtze ecosystem’s health. Their deaths could forebode an ecological disaster, for if the system cannot support the porpoises, soon it may not support other species such as human beings.
　　Official statistics show that every year more than 7,000 fishing boats from nine provinces fish in the Dongting Lake. Now, more than 10,000 fishermen make a living there, 2.5 times the amount in the 1950s, with many using unsustainable fishing methods.
　　Lu Yiwei, head of a fishery management station under the Yueyang City Animal Husbandry and Fishery Bureau, said that the Dongting Lake’s fishery resources are diminishing at a speed of 10-15 percent every five years. Fishermen can no longer catch as many fish as before, and as a result, their income has decreased nearly 75 percent since the 1990s.
　　


　　 Protective measures
　　The finless porpoise is currently classified as a second-level protected animal in China. In 2001, the Ministry of Agriculture promulgated an action plan on protecting the species. So far, six nature reserves have been set up on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to boost their population.
　　In 2005, the Ministry of Agriculture earmarked 3.5 million yuan ($554,800) for the establishment of a municipal-level finless porpoise reserve in Yueyang.
　　Nonetheless, Xu published an article in February 2012 claiming that Yueyang’s finless porpoise reserve existed “only on paper.”
　　According to Yueyang’s fishery authorities, the nature reserve’s administration bought law enforcement vessels and office equipment in 2007 with funding from the Central Government, but the local government has failed to pay counterpart funds as required, so the nature reserve has not begun official operation.
　　After the recent deaths, the nature reserve in Yueyang and Yueyang Finless Porpoise Protection Association led by Xu decided to pool their conservation efforts.
　　At present, the nature reserve is understaffed, while Xu’s organization is illequipped despite many volunteers. Local fishery authorities have agreed to loan equipment such as a speedboat to volunteers and subsidize their patrolling missions.
　　The Yueyang Municipal Government also decided to allocate 500,000 yuan ($79,260) this year to enhance finless porpoise protection, and planned to include further conservation funding in its budget starting next year.
　　In the meantime, the Hunan Animal Husbandry and Fishery Bureau said that it planned to designate specific areas in the Dongting Lake for finless porpoise off-site conservation.
　　Wang Kexiong, a researcher with the Institute of Hydrology under Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that finless porpoises should be protected in three ways: conservation in its natural habitat, off-site conservation and artificial reproduction. In light of the serious environmental deterioration of finless porpoises’ natural habitat, experts prefer the latter two means of conservation.