A Chinese freshwater dolphin has been declared extinct after desperate efforts to rescue it came too late.
One British zoologist today described the loss of the Yangtze River dolphin as a "shocking tragedy".
It is the first official extinction of a large vertebrate for more than 50 years. Experts say human activity killed off the white long-beaked dolphin, which grew to eight feet weighed up to 500 pounds.
The animal is the first cetacean, the group of mammals that includes dolphins, whales and porpoises, to vanish from Earth as a direct result of human influence.
In the 1950s the dolphin, a species unique to the Yangtze river also known as the Baiji, had a population of thousands. Over the next five decades its numbers declined rapidly as China modernised and made heavy use of the river for fishing, transport, and electricity generation.
During Mao's "Great Leap Forward", traditional veneration of the Baiji — nicknamed "Goddess of the Yangtze" — was denounced and the dolphin hunted for its flesh and skin.
Industrial pollution, depleted food supplies due to overfishing, loss of habitat, and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam all put further pressure on the dolphin.