Foe to friend: Fishermen join fight to save endangered Pakistan dolphin

Foe to friend: Fishermen join fight to save endangered Pakistan dolphin

Freshwater dolphins are flourishing in a stretch of Pakistan's main river after a helping hand from fishermen mobilized to defend a rare species driven to near-extinction. Identifiable by their saw-like beaks, Indus River dolphins once swam from the Himalayas to the Arabian sea, but now mostly cluster in a 180-kilometre (110-mile) length of the waterway in southern Sindh province. A glimpse of a dolphin cutting through muddy water to gasp for air is a regular sight along the mighty river, but most villagers nearby were unaware their neighbors were on the brink of extinction.

"We had to explain that it was a unique species only found in the Indus and nowhere else," Abdul Jabbar, who gave up fishing for a job on the dolphin rescue team, told AFP on the banks of Dadu Canal, which he patrols by motorbike. Decades of uncontrolled fishing and habitat loss caused by pollution and man-made dams saw the dolphin population plummet to around 1,200 at the turn of the century. They are classed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which says their numbers have fallen by more than 50 percent since the 1940s.

Dolphin hotline

In a bid to turn around