Sindh Wildlife Department officials saved an Indus blind dolphin stranded in the Rohri Canal on Wednesday and released it back into the Indus River. The rescued dolphin was a male dolphin – six feet long, 16 years old and weighing 55 kilogrammes – stuck in the main Rohri Canal due to the reduced water level.
Wildlife officials and experts after a checkup released into the river along Satiyun Jo Aastan, near Sadh Belo in Sukkur. Dolphin expert and wildlife official, Hussain Buksh Bhaagat told Pakistan Today that he and his team including Wildlife Sukkur Deputy Conservator Taj Mohammad Shaikh, Sukkur Wildlife Game Inspector Anwar Ali Bhatti, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) officials, journalists and common citizens successfully rescued the stranded dolphin.
Bhaagat said that during the last two years, more than 60 dolphins have died after getting caught in fishing nets and also slipping into different canals. “Dolphins are still dying and on an average, one or two dead dolphins are reported every week between Guddu Barrage and Sukkur barrages, where about 200 fishing licenses are issued by the Fisheries Department on Benazir Shaheed Cards,” said Bhaagat.
Indus blind dolphin or Planista minor is an inhabitant of the Indus River for centuries but due to an increase in industrial effluent release into the river from the industrial zones of Punjab, construction of barrages, issuance of fishing licences and pouring of poison in the river for fishing, this endangered species of river dolphins is under serious threat.
Presently, out of about 1,300 blind dolphins, 800 are surviving between Guddu and Sukkur barrages.
Following the ongoing monsoon rains, the Irrigation Department ordered the closure of link canals, due to which the dolphins get stranded in them.
