Pakistan expands protected habitat for Indus River dolphin as recovery offers hope

Between 11 million and 16 million years ago, during the high sea levels of the middle Miocene period, the ancestors of the Indus River dolphin entered the muddy waters of what is the Indus Basin today. Over millennia, they adapted to their new environment through extraordinary evolutionary shifts, developing sophisticated echolocation while gradually losing their eyesight.

Today, these blind mammals, living mostly in Pakistan (with a small population in northwestern India), navigate the river’s shallow, dry-season waters by swimming on their sides. Yet, these evolutionary marvels offer little defense against the modern transformation of their habitat.

That habitat is fragmented by vast networks of dams, human-made canals and irrigation barrages. Consequently, the Indus River dolphin (Platanista minor), locally known as the bhulan, has seen its historical range slashed by approximately 80%. The species, which boasted an estimated population of 10,000 in the late 19th century, plummeted to just 617 individuals by 2001 before rebounding to around 2,000 over the next decade. The Indus River dolphin is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List.

In response, Pakistan’s government has officially created the Punjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary in June 2026, safeguarding nearly 200 kilometers (123 miles) of the river in Punjab. This new zone connects with an existing protected area in Sindh province, southeastern Pakistan, that creates a contiguous 400-km (249-mi) stretch of legally protected habitat, offering a critical lifeline to one of the world’s rarest freshwater dolphins.

The timing of this legal protection is of the essence, as a landmark 2025 study published in Endangered Species Research (ESR) documented the Indus River dolphin’s metapopulation to have successfully increased to an estimated 1,987 individuals. This reflects a 19.4% increase between 2011 and 2017, demonstrating that past conservation interventions such as the outlawing of dolphin hunting in the 1970s have yielded tangible results. Nearly 99% of this surviving population is now concentrated in a 690-km (430-mi) stretch of the river between the Chashma barrage in Punjab and Sukkur barrage in Sindh province.

“The Indus River dolphin is endemic to the Indus River system, and the overwhelming majority of the remaining global population occurs in Pakistan, with only a very small remnant population now left in the Beas River in India,” Hamera Aisha, lead author of the 2025 ESR study, told Mongabay by email. “This also means that if these populations were lost from the Indus, there is no comparable population elsewhere that could secure the future of the species.”

“This also gives Pakistan a unique global responsibility for the species,” she said.

Despite the encouraging population growth, conservationists warn that these hard-won gains remain exceptionally fragile, and the dolphins, confined to a fraction of their original habitat, face mounting, multifaceted threats.

The most immediate danger comes from the very waters they inhabit. Between 2008 and 2023, gillnet entanglement accounted for 52% of documented dolphin deaths in the Indus Basin.

“The river section in Punjab holds the second largest population of the Indus river dolphin,”  Uzma Khan, a biologist with the World Wildlife Fund and co-author of the 2025 study, told Mongabay by email. “Punjab auctions fishing contracts for commercial fishing, which means that a contractor would take as much fish as possible to make the contract economically feasible. This is detrimental to dolphins as mortality due to entanglements in fishing gear is one of the leading threats to river dolphins globally.”

The Indus River dolphin is known as “the Queen of the Indus River,” and subject to Sindh wildlife protection laws, Javed Mahar, conservator of the Sindh Wildlife Department, told Mongabay. “Earlier, before construction of barrages and dams on rivers, it was found from Attock to the Indus delta, but its habitat shrinkage took place. The Government of Sindh during 1970 extended legal protection to this iconic species and declared the Indus Dolphin Reserve between Guddu and Sukkur Barrage. Similar steps were required from the other two provinces, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Punjab.”

Mahar views the new 123-mile stretch as a vital continuation of Sindh’s legacy. “Recently, the declaration of a protected area for the Indus Dolphin in Punjab is an encouraging step taken in the right direction,” he said. “With the presence of an experienced organization in the shape of WWF-Pakistan, being in partnership with Sindh province for the cause of the Indus Dolphin, it is expected that there shall be concrete steps for future procreation.”

For Hamera Aisha and her research team, the creation of the Punjnad sanctuary is a vital step precisely because it addresses the lack of formal regulation over commercial fishing in Punjab. Until now, the Indus Dolphin Reserve protected the species in the Guddu-Sukkur stretch in Sindh. Located upstream in Punjab, the new Punjnad sanctuary complements this protected area in Sindh.

“The new Punjnad sanctuary therefore represents an important expansion of formal protection in Punjab,” Aisha said.

“The sanctuary has the potential to make a substantial difference in addressing threats such as fisheries interactions because it provides a stronger basis for regulating activities, monitoring threats and coordinating conservation interventions.”

While lines on a map offer legal recourse, the physical realities of the Indus River pose an entirely different set of challenges. The habitat remains severely fragmented by water barrages constructed for irrigation of agricultural lands. These structures trap dolphins in isolated subpopulations and frequently lead them into dangerous human-made canals.

For more than two decades, WWF has operated specialized rescue units to save dolphins stranded in these irrigation channels. Rescuing these highly stressed animals often involves transporting them over rough roads back to the main river channel.

While the new sanctuary connects 400 km of habitat legally, Aisha points out an important distinction between “continuity of protection and ecological connectivity.” The sanctuary designation does not resolve the broader physical fragmentation caused by the barrage system.

“Stranding of dolphins is a more serious issue further downstream in Sukkur,” Khan said.

The Punjab Wildlife and Parks Department aims to deploy more staff in the newly protected area, which will help monitor dolphin movements and make the waters safer. Aisha suggested that while removing the barrages was unrealistic, their operation could increasingly incorporate ecological considerations to reduce the risk of dolphins entering the canals.

Beyond fishing nets and concrete barrages, the Indus River ecosystem is under intense strain from broader environmental degradation. Gold mining operations along the river utilize toxic chemicals like mercury and cyanide, contaminating the water and harming the entire aquatic food web. Furthermore, climate change is altering precipitation patterns and accelerating Himalayan glacier melt, which threatens to disrupt the natural flow and health of the Indus River.

“Maintaining sufficient river flows and habitat quality is critical,” Aisha said.

“Dolphins depend on adequate water depth, connected channels and deep pools, and healthy fish populations. Water abstraction and altered flow regimes are therefore directly relevant to dolphin conservation. Pollution from agricultural, municipal and industrial sources and now the plastic pollution also needs greater attention because it affects both dolphins and their prey.”

Securing a future for the bhulan requires more than just government decrees. It demands active participation of those who rely on the river for their survival.

“Communities are pivotal to the success of any conservation initiative,” Khan said. “Over years we have seen that traditional fishers have taken other jobs and sustenance fishing has been replaced by commercial fishing. This new protected area intends to encourage community based sustainable fishing and we will see new rules gradually shape up to ensure community involvement to provide that livelihood support.”

The next critical step, according to Aisha, is implementing a science-based management plan involving local river-dependent communities, utilizing frameworks like the Conservation Assured | River Dolphin Standards (CA|RDS), an international set of standards for managing river dolphin conservation. Relying on enforcement alone is insufficient in a working river where people, fisheries, irrigation and biodiversity all depend on the same system.

The establishment of the Punjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary is a monumental achievement, reflecting decades of collaboration between provincial wildlife departments, the Ministry of Climate Change and organizations like WWF-Pakistan. Yet, experts say, this is not a finish line.

“This notification is a welcoming development and will help in protecting the species,” Khan said. “Hence, the responsibility of protecting the species lies on us!”

Banner image: An Indus River dolphin. Image by Shiana1 via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

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Citation:

Aisha, H., Khan, U., Arshad, M., Noureen, U., Akram, U., Mahar, J., … & Braulik, G. (2025). Abundance of the endangered Indus River dolphin Platanista minor. Endangered Species Research, 58, 315-329. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01453

Cite this article

Muhammad Talal (2026). Pakistan expands protected habitat for Indus River dolphin as recovery offers hope. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-330706