Pakistan protected 249 river miles for rare dolphins

Pakistan has protected roughly 249 miles of the Indus River for one of the world's rarest freshwater dolphins, connecting the fragmented habitat of a species that has spent decades losing ground. The Punjab government created the Punjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary along a 123-mile stretch where an estimated 440 Indus River dolphins live, according to WWF-Pakistan. The new sanctuary links to an existing protected area in Sindh Province, forming a continuous run of legally protected water about the length of New York State. Only around 2,000 of the endangered dolphins are thought to remain, their range carved up over the years by dams and irrigation canals built as the economy grew. WWF-Pakistan, which has worked on the animal since the 1990s, will help design a management plan. The dolphin sits at the top of the food chain, which means saving it means saving nearly everything beneath it in the river.