The world’s only freshwater porpoise is on the brink of extinction, because of the profound degradation of the environment of China’s Yangtze River.

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species is moving the Yangtze Finless Porpoise from “endangered” to “critically endangered”.  There are fewer than 1,000 of them left, a 50 percent decline from 2006.  And it closely follows another extinction on the same polluted waterway.

“The Baiji only recently went extinct on the Yangtze River,” said Jonathan Baillie, Director of Conservation Programs at the Zoological Society of London

“If we now lose the Yangtze Finless Porpoise, future generations will undoubtedly wonder if we were ignorant, incompetent or both.”

In fact, the poor state of the Yangtze River has other species on the “critically endangered” list:  the Chinese alligator,  (Alligator sinensis), two types of sturgeon, the Yangtze soft-shell turtle, and the Chinese paddlefish.