Continuous surveys were conducted in the Ganges River in a stretch of over 1900 km from Haridwar, at the foothills of the Himalayas, to Farakka near the India–Bangladesh border in 1996–1998 (Sinha 1999 Sinha et al. During 1990–1994, other researchers have conducted dolphin surveys at several sections of the Ganges River and its tributaries (Behera 1995 Smith et al. Our research team at Patna University (Patna) has conducted several surveys in discrete segments of the Ganges River from 1991 to 1996, under the Dolphin Conservation Project sponsored by the Ganga Project Directorate, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India (Sinha 1996, 1997 Sinha et al. Overall, information on ecology and conservation status of river dolphins in India is spatially and temporally patchy. Nevertheless, these reports were not based on continuous or systematic surveys, and the population status was most likely a rough estimate. Approximately 100 years later, however, a few papers reported some details on the population status of the Ganges dolphin as of the 1980s (Jones 1982 Mohan 1989). Anderson ( 1879) provided the first description of the distribution range, morphology, and anatomy of the dolphin, although he did not discuss the dolphin’s population status or ecology. There is no credible estimate of the range-wide numbers, but the subspecies was listed as “endangered” on the 1996 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, due to a reduction in its historical distribution range and projected declines in population size due to increasing threats (IUCN 1996).Īlthough the Ganges dolphin is mentioned in mythological and historical literature, its occurrence in the Hooghly River, the tidal zone of the Ganges, was first documented in 1801 by William Roxburgh, Superintendent of the Botanical Garden, Calcutta (Roxburgh 1801). Ganges River dolphins, commonly known as susu, Platanista gangetica gangetica, are distributed throughout the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna and Karnaphuli–Sangu river systems of Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and potentially Bhutan (Mohan et al.
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