A recent World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) survey has found the number of over the last 16 years due to successful community-led conservation efforts.
An initial census in 2001 estimated there were 1,200 dolphins living in the Indus River, putting the species on the brink of extinction, but numbers have now increased by 50% to 1,816.A team of 20 scientists and researchers from WWF-Pakistan, the Zoological Survey of Pakistan, and provincial wildlife departments ran the survey from March 20 to April 13, 2017, during the Indus River’s low water season when dolphin numbers are most concentrated and therefore easiest to count.Indus river dolphins live exclusively in Pakistan, except for a tiny, isolated population of around 30 dolphins residing in India’s Beas River.