For the Three Rivers Arts Festival in 2007, I mounted a life-sized vinyl sillouette of the recently-declared-extinct Baiji (also known as the Chinese River Dolphin, or Yangtze Dolphin) nearby the main exhibition space. The aesthetic of the imagery and accompanying text is meant to reflect an informational display at a museum, and is positioned along a high traffic sidewalk. The work was installed on an outside window of Two PPG Place, in the Pittsburgh Plate Glass office complex in downtown Pittsburgh (the main exhibition space is across the street in the PPG Wintergarden).

To accompany the life-sized silouette, I printed hundreds of black and white vinyl stickers with an image of the Baiji alongside a swimming human, showing size comparison. These stickers were distributed throughout the duration of the exhibition and afterword, both locally and through the mail. The image on the sticker is taken from a field guide for oceanic mammals authored by Mark Carwardine, who in 1990 co-wrote (with Douglas Adams) the book Last Chance to See, which conatins a moving chapter about the dolphins.

On August 19, 2006, an amatuer video capturing what appeared to be a Baiji jumping out of the water in the Yangtze River was presented to the media. Although the dolphins are still considered to be "functionally extinct" (not enough of said species exist in order to breed successfully), the new siting gives some hope that these animals are not completely lost.

text on the window reads as follows:

Chinese River Dolphin (Baiji)
Lipotes vexillifer
declared functionally extinct 2006
(shown actual size)

The Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin, was one of only a handful of freshwater riverine dolphins known to exist. Having evolved to near blindness in the turbid Yangtze river, Baiji navigated almost exclusively using echolocation, or underwater sonar. As such, they were highly sensitive to human disruption, particularly noise pollution from engines (and subsequent collision with boats), entanglement in barbed fishing nets, "electrofishing" practices, and widespread habitat loss due to industrial expansion.

Although the Chinese government was quick to focus on protection tactics once it became obvious that these mammals were critically endangered, the last confirmed siting of a Baiji in the wild was in 2004. A research expedition was performed in the autumn of 2006, and no dolphins were found. Despite being legally protected since 1975, the Baiji was quietly declared functionally extinct six months ago, in December of 2006.