Endangered Gangetic Dolphins threatened by the world’s longest river cruise

Conservationists fear pollution and river traffic...

The world’s longest river cruise ‘MV Ganga Villas’ would start its journey from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and travel all the way through western India to Bangladesh and finally resting its journey at Dibrugarh in Assam.

Environmentalist and wildlife conservationists believe that this journey could however harm the aquatic life of the rivers it will travel. They say that the luxury cruise that would travel through 27 river systems could do lasting damages to the Ganges River Dolphins which are already an endangered species. 

“The cruises are a dangerous proposition in addition to all the existing risks for the dolphins,” said Ravindra Kumar Sinha, whose conservation efforts led the government to designate Gangetic dolphins as a protected species in the 1990s. Their numbers have risen in recent years, with about 3,200 in the Ganges and 500 in the Brahmaputra, due to improved water conditions and conservation initiatives.

However he fears that the river dolphins naught face the same fate as the river Baiji river dolphins or China which were declared functionally extinct in 2006 due to increased river traffic on the Yangtze River. 

Avli Verma, a researcher at Manthan Adhyayan Kendra centre in Pune, which studies water and energy policies, said the government had set aside necessary environmental safeguards in favour of an “ease of doing business” approach.

“If precautionary conservation principles are not applied today, waterways will not be sustainable in the long term. You cannot promote cruises on Ganga as eco-tourism, while endangering the habitat and the existence of Gangetic dolphins.”