Ganges River Dolphins: World Wildlife Day: India has a total of 6,327 river dolphins with UP having the highest number, PM announces multiple wildlife conservation initiatives | India News
NEW DELHI: India has a total of 6,327 river dolphins with Uttar Pradesh reporting the highest number at 2,397 followed by Bihar (2,220), West Bengal (815), Assam (635) and Jharkhand (162). This is according to the first ever estimation report for riverine dolphins in the country, home to 90% of the world’s Ganges river dolphins.
Wildlife scientists arrived at these numbers after undertaking a range-wide survey of river dolphins, India’s national aquatic animal, covering over 8,000 km, during 2021-23. It involved surveying 28 rivers across eight states.
The estimation report was released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the World Wildlife Day on Monday at Sasan Gir in Gujarat, where he also chaired a meeting of the National Board for Wildlife and announced multiple initiatives for different species.
On the occasion, PM announced the initiation of the new cycle of lion estimation this year, expansion of the cheetah habitat to Gandhisagar sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh and Banni grasslands in Gujarat, and setting up of a centre of excellence at Wildlife Institute of India campus in SACON (Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History), Coimbatore.
Besides, he laid the foundation stone of the National Referral Centre for Wildlife at Junagadh, which will function as the hub for coordination and governance of various aspects related to wildlife health and disease management.
The Centre at SACON will work for effective management of human-wildlife conflict. It will also support the states/UTs in equipping ‘rapid response teams’ with advanced technology, and gadgets for tracking, forewarning in human-wildlife conflict hotspots.
The population of Ganges river dolphin, once present in tens of thousands of numbers, has dwindled abysmally to less than 2,000 during the last century due to multiple reasons, including direct killing, habitat fragmentation by dams and barrages and indiscriminate fishing.
Their declining numbers prompted the government to launch Project Dolphin on August 15, 2020, for their conservation. “Monitoring dolphin populations and trends is crucial for their effective conservation. Increase in their numbers has reflected the health of the aquatic ecosystem in the range states,” said a wildlife scientist.
As part of its conservation efforts, scientists of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) had in December last year tagged a male Ganges river dolphin and released it in Brahmaputra river in Kamrup district in Assam for gathering critical information about the country’s national aquatic animal. It was the first-ever such move of satellite tagging of any species in India.
