Extinction Awareness Day

Thank you to all of my followers (A little birdie told me there are about a dozen of you).  I have revamped my site and hope to be able to better highlight animals that have gone extinct in recent times, the past 350 years or so.   My goal for starting this blog has been 2 fold. 1) To bring attention to those animals that have gone extinct in recent years, so that we can hopefully save critically endangered animals from similar fates.  There are so many amazing creatures that we'll never be able to see in the wild or in zoos. 2) To be able to use some of my creativity to get people interested in recently extinct animals, which is why I wrote my book, Deader Than a Dodo.   I'm hoping that by putting extinct animals into an adventure, kids will get more excited about saving creatures facing similar fates in the near future. My goal is is to do a post every other day that highlights extinct animals and have  a drawing/cartoon to accompany it.  I...

The Baiji, also known as the Yangtze River Dolphin, was one of several freshwater dolphin species.  It was 7 - 8 feet long and lived in the freshwater of the Yangtze River in China.  It is believed that they lived up to 24 years.  The word "baiji" in Chinese means "white dolphin".  The Chinese called the baiji, the "Goddess of the Yangtze".   The baiji were never used as a food source, but they had trouble surviving as the people began more efficient fishing processes in the river.  The baiji would often get tangled in fishing lines and nets left in the river.  If they couldn't get the the surface to breathe, they would drown.  The development of dams and cities along the Yangtze River caused additional stressors for the baiji.   Scientists in China began working on a species protection plan in 1985.  The last baiji in captivity died in 2002.  In 2006 the baiji was listed as "critically endangered" (meaning very few were r...