In the murky waters of the Indus, where sight long ago lost its purpose, the bhulan dolphins (Platanista minor) navigate by echolocation and by swimming on their sides. Recently the province of Punjab officially established the Punjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary, which, together with the existing protected area in Sindh, forms a continuous 400-kilometre corridor of legal protection.
According to research from 2025, the total population has reached roughly 1987 individuals — a rise of 19,4 % between 2011 and 2017. Nearly 99 % of the animals are concentrated in the stretch between the Chashma and Sukkur barrages. The new section in Punjab stretches for about 200 km and encompasses key habitats where about two-thirds of the Punjabi group is concentrated (in the province as a whole there are around 660 dolphins).
Historically, the species' range has shrunk by 80 % because of barrages, irrigation canals and water diversion. Hunting was banned back in the 1970s, and this bore its first fruit. Yet the threats remain: entanglement in nets, pollution and habitat fragmentation. As WWF-Pakistan's observations show, the dolphin is the apex predator of the river ecosystem, and its well-being directly reflects the state of the entire basin.
Creating the corridor is not merely a line on a map. It links scattered stretches, reduces the risk of populations becoming isolated and opens up possibilities for joint management with local communities. Evidently, such measures help not only the rare species but also the fish stocks on which thousands of families along the river depend.
Over decades of work by WWF-Pakistan and provincial agencies, it has been possible to establish the rescue of animals from canals and to set up monitoring. Now legal protection reinforces these efforts, setting a precedent for other river systems in the region.
Protecting a single species in a river often becomes the first step towards restoring the entire aquatic system, on which both people and countless other inhabitants depend.
