WSJ ran the following AP story today on an ending that made me sad for a long minute:

A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for 20 million years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared Wednesday after ending a fruitless six-week search of its Yangtze River habitat. The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.

Apart from the larger reason of the diminishment of the universe that happens when a species simply vanishes, I have a more personal reason: one of my most magical memories from my college days in India was seeing a pair of river dolphins (which I think are related to the baiji, and are similarly endangered), next to the boat's stern in which I was travelling in the Gangetic delta. Here is a poem by Wendell Berry since I can't write an elgy for the baiji myself:

For The Future

Planting trees early in spring, we make a place for birds to sing in time to come. How do we know? They are singing here now. There is no other guarantee that singing will ever be.