A volunteer next to the body of an Amazon river dolphin in the city of Caballo Cocha (Peru).@camilodiazphotography (WWF Colombia)
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The first to see it was Don Segundo Peña, a fisherman from the Amazon. He identified it far away, near Caballo Cocha, a Peruvian town reached by river from Colombia. “This morning I saw a dead dolphin,” he told veterinarians at the Omacha Foundation in Puerto Nariño. “It was one of the pink ones and had no mesh mark.” The seconds who saw it recognized it from a distance. It wasn’t the size or the smell, but the fact that voracious buzzards surrounded him almost six days after his death. “If it hadn’t been for that, we might have thought it was a rock.”
The dolphin featured in this story did not die in connection with the drought, as was the case with the more than 150 whales that recently appeared lifeless in Lake Tefé in Brazil. It is suspected that he was killed. “The decline in the fish population means that fishermen and dolphins are very competitive, confronting each other,” says Jimena Valderrama, a veterinarian from Omacha, after taking some samples of the animal, which is already starting to decompose. This way you can not only know your subspecies, but also see the level of mercury in your body.
Through their cunning and intelligence, dolphins have learned to break fishermen’s nets to keep the fish, which has led to conflict with humans that has increased their multiple threats. It’s not just that they kill them. Of course, there is also the drought. Here, on the Colombian side of the Amazon, there are still low water levels on the Amazon and its tributaries, although according to the municipality, discharges have been increasing since October. But there are other factors that challenge its survival, such as the mercury pollution left by mining. Valderrama, who has measured the levels of this element in some dolphins, assures that he has found that they have deposits of up to 36 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), when the limit accepted by the World Health Organization – as a reference – is 0 .5 (mg/kg).
Don Segundo Peña, sustainable fisherman of the Amazon.@camilodiazphotography (WWF Colombia)
Then there are oil spills that force them to swim in toxic environments, deforestation that changes their entire ecosystem, and the construction of dams that isolates their populations. A study published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice found that by 2022, 434 dams were already built or under construction across the Amazon basin, while 463 more were in various stages of planning. “Isolation of subpopulations of river dolphins may also lead to local extinction of the species in dam-affected basins, as connectivity across portions of their range is important for genetic exchange,” the study says.
This, along with other factors, has led experts to warn that the population could disappear. The two river dolphins that swim across South America – the gray (Sotalia fluviatilis) and the pink (Inia geoffrensis) – are classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Knowing how many are left is not easy to determine. Dolphins are sometimes barely visible. But the truth is, as Valderrama says, “If Lake Tefé recurs every year, we could lose the river dolphins of South America in ten years.”
That’s why what happened in Brazil and what could happen in Colombia is so serious. “It’s not about the dolphins here or there, they move and we can’t separate their threats,” explains Silvia Vejarano, conservation specialist at WWF Colombia. Since 2017, organizations from Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia, including yours, have come together to protect river dolphins as part of the South American River Dolphin Initiative (SARDI). In addition, the signing of a World Declaration on River Dolphins will also take place next Tuesday, October 24th in Bogotá, Colombia.
Aerial view of the Loretoyacu River.@camilodiazphotography (WWF Colombia)
“These animals are at the top of the food chain, which means that when there are dolphins there is a good ecosystem,” says Valderrama, echoing the excitement that tourists and residents of Puerto Nariño feel every time they see them see. a fin from the water.
Another critical summer for the Amazon
When people talk about what the Amazon used to look like, it seems like they are talking about something that happened much longer ago. But a lot has changed here recently. “It has been more than 10 or 11 years since there was such a strong summer,” says Lilia Java, community leader at the Ticoya Indigenous Reservation in the port. The Loretoyacu, a tributary of the Amazon that appears to almost surround Puerto Nariño, was drier than normal. “Sometimes fishermen couldn’t go fishing and the number of fish actually decreased.”
Lilia Java, leader and part of the community of the Colombian indigenous reserve Ticoya.@camilodiazphotography (WWF Colombia)
Vejarano also remembers that when she was here 20 years ago to write her thesis, you couldn’t see the extensive beaches along the Amazon like you can today. “Never, not even at low tide. There were only a few parts of Peru already identified where this happened,” he explains. But now the Amazon has “huge beaches, even with grass, suggesting the beach has been there for a month or more.” The extreme summer can also be felt on this side of the Amazon, although less drastic than in Brazil.
They say it hasn’t rained for a month. And just eight days ago the water fell, making the Loretoyacu channel dangerous. Further inland, towards Lake Tarapoto, the municipality of Santa Clara, the only one in the area to be declared a Ramsar in 2017 – an international figure originally created to protect wetlands – suffered severely from water shortages. What they drink and use as food comes only from the rain, so they had to go to Puerto Nariño to bring with them about 20 liters that would last them about three to four days. But it hasn’t been an easy road, according to Gentil Gomez Ahue, who served as community leader for four years.
Because the rivers were so low, only one person could sail as the extra weight would cause the boat to stagnate. They also had to walk and go out to push him. “If it takes us 40 minutes to get to Puerto Nariño during high tide, this summer they will give us two hours,” he says. Four hours round trip on the water for just four days. “The fact that it rained eight days ago was a blessing,” he adds. Meanwhile, the sounds of thunder randomly occur in the air. Minutes later, it rains again in Puerto Nariño and people hope that it will happen more often.
*The WWF funded the trip to Puerto Nariño