Will the porpoise go the dolphin way?

A series of recent water quality and food safety issues have raised public concern. The World Wide Fund for Nature has delved into the vulnerability of the long-term health of China's rivers and wide-ranging variety of species, which depend on clean and abundant freshwater sources for their survival.

The Ministry of Agriculture recently announced that only 1,000 finless porpoises were left in the Yangtze River, its tributaries and adjoining lakes. The endangered species has declined at a shocking rate of 13.7 percent a year in recent times. At this pace, the best scientific estimates say the Yangtze finless porpoise could become extinct in 10 to 15 years.

The porpoise has thrived in the main stream of the Yangtze River for about 300,000 years and is the only surviving freshwater subspecies of the narrow-ridged finless porpoise. But excessive exploitation of resources in the Yangtze River basin has pushed the mammal to the brink of extinction.