Posts Tagged ‘river dolphins’
Indus river dolphin
See all species The Indus River dolphin lives in the Indus river basin of Pakistan and India. Unfortunately, there are currently less than two thousand of these endangered dolphins left in the world. However, there have been some promising signs of increasing numbers, which can be attributed to better protection measures in Pakistan. Other names:…
Read MoreMeet the legendary pink river dolphins
Botos don’t look or live like other dolphins. Flamingo-pink all over with super-skinny snouts and chubby cheeks, they certainly stand out in a crowd. They never set a flipper in the ocean – home is the fresh, flowing waters of three mighty South American river basins: the Amazon, Orinoco and Tocantins-Araguaia. The botos’ magnificent realm…
Read MoreRiver dolphins observed playing with anaconda
Researchers in Bolivia recorded an unusual interaction between local rivers dolphins and an anaconda snake last year in the Tijamuchi river. The two species would not normally interact but on this occasion a group of dolphins, some of which appeared to be juveniles, were seen carrying the snake through the water. At times the dolphins…
Read MoreWorking with Amazon communities to protect pink river dolphins
Whale and Dolphin Conservation is a founding supporter of the Natutama Foundation. Natutama works in the Colombian Amazon developing important and often ground-breaking conservation and education projects with communities to protect dolphins, manatees and other wildlife. Natutama means ‘everything under the water’ in the Amazon Indian Ticuna language. The Natutama Foundation and the Amazon indigenous communities…
Read MoreFranciscana
See all species The franciscana is a small dolphin with a very long, slender beak – in fact they hold the record for the longest beak in proportion to body size, of any dolphin. The franciscana’s beak is 15 percent of the total body length. Franciscanas live only in the shallow, coastal waters of the southwestern Atlantic of…
Read MoreGanges river dolphin
See all species Ganges river dolphins are freshwater dolphins that inhabit the Ganges, Meghna, Brahmaputra, and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. They are one of the oldest species of dolphin still existing today. Unfortunately, due to their endangered status, there are less than five thousand Ganges river dolphins left in the entire…
Read MoreBaiji
See all species The Chinese river dolphin, or baiji, holds the unenviable record of being the first dolphin species driven to extinction by human beings. The mighty Yangtze River in China was the baiji’s home for 20 million years. It took less than 50 years for humans to wipe them out. Baiji numbers crashed dramatically…
Read MoreLast chance to see pink river dolphins?
I was lucky enough to go on the trip of a lifetime recently, to the rainforest of Peru. I’d been planning for this trip for a long time, scraping together any spare cash over the years and finally, I got my chance. Working in the fundraising team at WDC we often talk about all the…
Read MoreEndangered dolphins disappearing from river in Bangladesh
A population of one of the world’s most endangered dolphins is under serious threat in the Halda River, Bangladesh. In the four month period up to February, 17 South Asian river dolphins (also known as the Ganges River dolphin) died in the river and experts are now calling for their home to be declared a sanctuary…
Read MoreTo save river dolphins, we need to protect their freshwater homes
Further progress has been recently made in reaching the goal of identifying and protecting important habitat for river dolphins. Experts have agreed that a method currently used to identify areas of ocean that are important habitats for whales and oceanic dolphins can also be used to identify important habitats for aquatic mammals such as river…
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