Posts Tagged ‘river dolphins’
Latest endangered species list confirms all freshwater dolphins face battle to avoid extinction
A dolphin found in the Amazon river, the tucuxi, has been classed as endangered on the latest Red List issued by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation for Nature) – the body that assesses the survival prospects of plants, animals and fungi. This latest classification for the tucuxi now means that all the world’s…
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 More
Franciscana
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 More
South Asian river dolphin
See all species Although they now live in separate Asian river systems, the Ganges and Indus River dolphins look identical because they share a common ancestor. They are currently categorised as subspecies and scientists are considering the evidence that they have evolved into two species. Sadly, both are endangered; there are only one to two…
Read More
Baiji
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 More