Field guide for monitoring Ganges and Indus river dolphins released

New Delhi, 3 October (H.S): The union Minister for Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupendra Yadav Saturday released a field guide for monitoring Ganges and Indus river dolphins, associated aquatic fauna and habitat. Dolphin is an aquatic apex predator and controls the aquatic system. Dolphin act as an umbrella species, whose conservation will result in well being of associated habitat and biodiversity, including humans. Dolphin enumeration is very important to delineate important conservation areas, where development can be planned with appropriate mitigation measures, and to also secure livelihoods of local communities.

So far, there is no synchronized enumeration plan, however sporadic enumerations have been done in past. First time a standardized monitoring protocol has been made and will be employed for synchronized Dolphin enumeration exercise to be undertaken in states of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. Dolphin estimation is an important process and constituent of ?Project Dolphin?.

The monitoring protocol methodology includes visual monitoring of Gangetic Dolphin populations. Depending upon the width and depth of river, boat based method for Dolphin visual monitoring would use double observer survey, boat in tandem survey and single boat survey.