Ex situ conservation of Yangtze finless porpoise

摘要

Of the three distinct subspecies of finless porpoise in Chinese waters, the Yangtze population (N. phocaenoides asiaeorientalis) is the one that can only be found in the freshwater of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze mainstream, the Poyang and Dongting lakes and some of Yangtze's tributaries. Under the direct and indirect influences of human activities, its habitats have been shrunk and degraded, and its population size is reduced to about 1,800, less than a half of the number at the beginning of the 1990s.