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The Committee draws attention to the multiple threats associated with development, habitat degradation and fragmentation, and pollutants facing river dolphins in the Amazon, Orinoco and Tocantins basins. It therefore:
(1) advises the Brazilian, Bolivian and Peruvian Governments, as they carry out their reviews of proposed construction of new dams for hydroelectric energy production, to explicitly consider the potential impacts on river dolphins (e.g. isolation, loss of genetic diversity, habitat degradation;
(2) discourages water pumping in the Araguaia-Tocantins river basin for agricultural use as such a practice causes dramatic decreases in water levels in rivers, thereby increasing the probability that dolphin populations will be extirpated;
(3) encourages range states of the Amazon basin and its tributaries to support and carry out baseline research into the impacts of the development of commercial waterways in the Amazon (hydrovias) and their potential impacts on dolphin populations and habitats, including but not limited to the ecological impacts of dredging, noise pollution, channelisation by embankments, altered sediment suspension and transfer, and changes in turbidity, light, oxygen availability and primary productivity, and (b) work to minimize or at least mitigate these impacts;
(4) encourages (a) a review of the status of dolphins trapped within dammed stretches of the Tocantins and Madeira rivers and (b) evaluation of possible relocation (translocation) of animals when environmental conditions create a high likelihood that they cannot continue to survive in this severely compromised habitat; and
(5) encourages the review of the effects and the scale of contaminant and heavy metal (e.g. mercury) pollution on river dolphins in key areas of the Amazon (Japura/Caquetá, Içá/Putumayo, in Brazil and Colombia) and Orinoco (Venezuela) basins. |