To protect the endangered Gangetic river dolphins, West Bengal will soon have the country’s first community reserve for the mammal. A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the State Wildlife Board. It would be set up in the Hooghly river and the methodology to develop the community reserve is being chalked out by a separate committee. The stretch of the Ganges river, also known as Hooghly in West Bengal, is roughly 500 km long and it passes through the densely populated Kolkata before merging with the Bay of Bengal in the Sundarbans.

According to a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) factsheet, the Ganges River dolphin, or susu, inhabits the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems of Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. Once found in thousands, there are fewer than 2,000 Gangetic dolphins left in the country in the entire distribution range along the Ganga and Brahamaputra river system. It was declared as the National Aquatic Animal in 2010. Often known as the ‘Tiger of the Ganges’, the river dolphin is an indicator animal, which has the same position in a river ecosystem as a tiger in a forest.

Test Your GK

The gruesome annual dolphin killing festival  is famous in which country?