Chandigarh, Dec 21 - The sighting of rare freshwater dolphins in the Harike wetland in north Punjab has enthused wildlife experts and nature lovers who now want to study their presence there.Hitherto known to survive only in the Indus river basin, especially in Pakistan, the spotting of the freshwater dolphins by a forest officer of the Punjab forest and wildlife department has generated a lot of interest among wildlife and nature lovers.Other staff have also confirmed their existence in the Harike wildlife sanctuary in Punjab's Ferozepur district, 50 km from the Sikh holy city of Amritsar.The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has already announced two experts - dolphin researcher Sanjay Beshera and aquatic wildlife expert Ashgar Nawabi - who will be heading to Harike, 300 km from here, to study the dolphins sighted there.Punjab's divisional forest officer Basanta Rajkumar filmed and photographed the dolphin pair near the confluence of the Sutlej and Beas rivers Dec 14 after sanctuary staff sighted the pair.Officials said there could be at least three dolphins in the wetland. The wetland is close to the international border between India and Pakistan and if the existence of the dolphins is confirmed, it is assumed that they could have swum upstream from Pakistan.'This is a great Christmas gift to Punjab. It qualifies as the rarest of rare sightings. Till now, Indus river dolphins were only found in the river in Pakistan,' Gunbir Singh of WWF-Punjab said.The history of the Indus river dolphins is traced to the Tethys Sea that existed between the Indian subcontinent and Asia over 50 million years ago.The Punjab wildlife department has also approached scientists of the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India to come and observe the mammals spotted at Harike.'We have approached scientists at the wildlife institute in Dehradun. Our officials are trying to observe the dolphins in Harike,' conservator of forests Jitender Sharma said here.Harike wildlife officials have been asked by the WWF and the wildlife institute experts to monitor the activities of the dolphins over the next few days.If the existence of dolphins is confirmed, wildlife and nature experts are already talking of conservation methods to help them breed in the wetland.
(c) Indo-Asian News Service
