Bridges on Kulsi sound death knell for river dolphins

Guwahati, June 13: The recovery of a Gangetic river dolphin carcass at the Kukurmara stretch of the Kulsi River on Wednesday has raised serious questions over the future survival of the state’s flagship aquatic species. The carcass—that of a sub-adult river dolphin—was spotted in the morning, following which a team of forest personnel retrieved it and sent it for a postmortem.

A departmental source told The Assam Tribune that the postmortem revealed serious injury marks on the river dolphin’s head and flipper, which could be due to an accidental collision with the pillars of an under-construction bridge.

“The carcass bore a number of injury marks on the skull and the flipper. The visceral organs, too, were protruding out. The carcass was two to three days old,” the sources added.

Conservationists had already warned about the danger posed to river dolphin movement by the construction of a number of bridges, including the railway ones, on the Kulsi River. The bridges with wide and tall pile caps have effectively constricted the path of the dolphins and fragmented their habitats, besides altering the water-flow regime.

A report by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) had also termed the bridges unscientifically constructed that have effectively negated the dolphin’s passage during the winter season, creating acoustic barriers for the blind mammals.

Local residents, however, refuse to rule out foul play in the death of the river dolphin, alleging that certain vested interest quarters are hell-bent on wiping out or driving out the remaining dolphin population from the Kulsi River for facilitating industries on the river bank.

“A few industrial units have already come up close to the dolphin habitat and are damaging it seriously. They have also blocked the river’s link with wetlands and affected the population of fish, which constitute the dolphin’s main diet. Lobbies are there to set up more and more polluting industries. We cannot rule out foul play in the development,” Debajit Choudhury, a local conservationist, said.

He added that the river dolphin population in Kulsi was rapidly dwindling, and it runs the risk of complete obliteration in the days ahead. “Till a few years ago, there were 30-odd dolphins, but now it has plummeted, as evidenced by significantly fewer sightings,” he said.

The Assam government had declared the river dolphin the ‘State Aquatic Animal’ in 2008, and the Central government notified it as the ‘National Aquatic Animal’ in 2009. Significantly, the endangered freshwater aquatic mammal is one of the best indicators of the health of an aquatic system and is protected as a Schedule-I species under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

-By Sivasish Thakur