As we start the international year of the dolphin, it's worth pausing to acknowledge a very sad milestone in our history. Last month, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society reported the loss of the baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin. This was the first recorded extinction of a cetacean species to be caused by human activity. As the website says:

"The baiji represents a loss not just of a species but a whole family of animals which were endemic to the Yangtze River and evolved separately to other whales and dolphins for over 20 million years. The baiji was described as a ‘living fossil’, remaining as it had, unchanged for at least 3 million years since it first left the sea to swim into the Yangtze River."

Echoes of Chief Seattle who in 1884 is reported as having said, “What happens to beasts will happen to man. All things are connected. If the beasts are gone, man would surely die of a great loneliness of spirit.”