Dugongs Are Now Extinct In China
A new report published in Royal Society journal states that Dugongs are practically extinct.
The dugongs are the only strictly herbivorous marine animals and the only extant species in the family Dugongidae.
Dugongs are historically recorded from all the countries that border the South China Sea, including China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.
However, the near-shore habitats inhabited by dugongs were overlapping with the activities of the fishers and other marine resource users, making them vulnerable to human pressures.
Although dugongs are probably now extirpated from China, efforts to evaluate, conserve and recover the region’s seagrass ecosystem, a key habitat for dugongs and wider regional biodiversity, is now becoming a conservation priority in Chinese waters along with the protection of other marine habitats.
Current rapid economic growth in China and other countries around the SCS, demonstrated through the recent release in coastal economic activities like fishing, boat based tourism and marine construction is altering the structure and function of critical marine habitats and impacting marine mammals and wider biodiversity across the region.
The extinction of an emblematic species such as the dugong in China raises further concerns for other threatened marine mammals within a system where human activities now dominate the seascape.
Dugongs are long-lived, late-maturing species with low reproductive rates, and hence its conservation becomes more essential. Persistent hunting along with the degradation of seagrass beds and accidental entanglement have probably enabled the rapid collapse of China's dugong population.
Many other species populations are declining swiftly, and needs urgent attention. While there may be future evidence that dugongs might survive in China, the study provides important evidence of the probable regional loss of a charismatic marine megafaunal species and the first functional extinction of a large vertebrae in Chinese coastal waters.
The researcher also negates possibilities of Chinese Dugongs shifting northwards along the Chinese coast due to the degradation of seagrass beds even in the northern regions.
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