Tide is turning for endangered Ganges River Dolphin

Rhys Blakely Times Online 30 Sep 09;

The outboard motor splutters to a halt and the crew holds its collective breath, all eyes fixed on the concentric ripples extending across the river.

In the milky-grey water of the Ganges near the ancient village of Raja Karna in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh one of the world’s most endangered species may have made a rare appearance.

Another splash and the sighting is confirmed. The cry goes out: “Dolphin!”

Less famous, graceful and numerous than its marine cousins, the Ganges River Dolphin is a shy, almost blind beast with the misfortune to favour a habitat that runs through one of the poorest and most overcrowded regions on the planet.

A dolphin in high spirits may leap, its long thin snout, tubby belly and oversized fins clearing the water. The spectacle is strangely moving but to witness it you have to find one — and that has rarely been more difficult than now.

A century ago the Ganges Dolphin was found across Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, from the river’s run through the Himalayan foothills down to the Bay of Bengal.

By 1982 the dolphin population in India had fallen to between 4,000 and 5,000. Today it is estimated by the World Wildlife Fund to be fewer than 2,000.

Conservationists say that the situation has reached crisis point and that the Ganges Dolphin is on course to suffer the fate of its Chinese cousin, the Yangtze River Dolphin, or Baiji, which became the first aquatic mammal to disappear in half a century when it was declared extinct in 2007.

The Ganges story echoes that of the Yangtze. India’s booming human population, like China’s, is taking too much water from its largest river, radically altering its flow, and pumping too much waste in. The dolphins, which need deep, clean water and often drown in fishing nets, have paid the price.

At Raja Karna, however, the tide might just be turning. In recent years locals have been encouraged to stop fishing and to use home-made organic compost instead of chemical fertilisers and they have been taught how to build small, basic sewage treatment facilities. The results have been striking: since the early 1980s the dolphin population has more than doubled from 20 to about 55 animals. Everywhere else along the Ganges the population has fallen.

Sandeep Behera, the World Wildlife Fund official leading the conservation programme, says that the dolphin’s resurgence in this small area bodes well for other flora and fauna, including humans.

“If you see a dolphin you know the water is good enough to drink,” he told The Times, before glugging down half a cupful of the Ganges. “They are the apex species and indicative of the entire ecosystem’s health.” To drink from elsewhere in the Ganges would be foolhardy, bordering on insane.

Downstream, in the holy city of Varanasi, the Ganges contains 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 millilitres, 120 times the safe bathing — let alone drinking — limit. The reading goes some way to explain why 1,000 children die of diarrhoeal sickness a day in India.

Even upstream from the worst pollution Dr Behera’s message — what is good for dolphins is good for people — resonates strongly with the population of Raja Karna.

Over the past decade half of the village, about 150 houses and 500 acres of valuable cropland have been consumed by the Ganges as the river has changed course.

The process is a natural one but locals believe that it has accelerated after the building of dozens of barrages and dams. It is a practice that has also fragmented the dolphin population, leading to worries of future inbreeding.

Near the Bijnor Barrage, one of several affecting the flow of water to Raja Karna, Jagdish, 80, sits near the river and sells the sandalwood paste needed to make pooja, or offerings to the gods.

“Humans are changing the Ganges,” he said. “Animals suffer but mankind will pay too.”