Technically she will get there, but when it comes to the post itself – this is an awesome post. Great topic, wish we read more about such things concerning SA. There is so much variety in the natural ecosystem in SA and a lot of is is in fact getting destroyed but rarely gets mentioned since it’s importance gets overshadowed by poverty and development issues. Good job Namrata.

I think it’s wrong to preserve the dolphins so tourists can enjoy them while 10s of millions of people in that same valley are living hand to mouth, or at the brink of starvation as soon as the crops fail.

I think Milleu touched upon this briefly. The effect of one species on another in a natural ecosystem is not very well understood in an ecosystem as complex as a big river. Plus, natural ecosystems can (and not necessarily) be highly sensitive to various factors and individual components and any change in one of them can cause an unbalance which may cause the whole ecosystem to change drastically. If you try to make dolphins expendable under the name of poverty, for all you know the whole system may metamorphose into something that wont be able to sustain the same poor people that currently depend on it for most of their survival needs. A look at Darwin’s Nightmare may be interesting.

The situation is so horrendous, so impossibly large, so inexorable, that it depresses me to no end, and I can’t see a way to meaningfully impact the situation. Most human beings can’t be made to care enough to act for events that will unfold over long time-arcs, except when they are to impact their own family directly. To top that, Indians breed a certain special kind of apathy – borne of poverty, self-preservation pressures, and blissful ignorance – that makes it convenient to focus on TODAY, this very second and not the future, and continue charmed lives in complete denial. That’s perhaps a special coping mechanism for knowing that their individual efforts count for the smallest unit of change – each of them(us) constitutes only 1 ppb (part per billion) of the nation’s mindshare.

Maybe I’m overdramatizing my desperation, but I don’t know how to help – the people chosen by the citizens are purposefully ineffective, and individuals and organizations continue to pollute the Ganga to their full capacity. I haven’t read the pdf, but do the very astute readers on this blog have any practical ideas on improving the condition of the river/s?

petra I think it’s wrong to preserve the dolphins so tourists can enjoy them while 10s of millions of people in that same valley are living hand to mouth, or at the brink of starvation as soon as the crops fail.

Man is just one of the many animals. You never know what the long term consequences of an extinct dolphin population might be on humans. So apart from the short term efforts at poverty removal, forgetting ecological preservation might have much worse consequences.

Thanks for the link Ziyarat.

Ekalavya, I’m not fond of any fish getting killed. Dolphins are particularly rare and are also a capstone species, see below. They are also more related to us.

Petra—I agree that poverty is a big issue, and normally I emphasize that front and center–see my last (and first) post. But that is almost all we ever hear about South Asian causes. It has an ecology like any other place, and it has a natural wealth like any other place. Desi-americans who would be unembarrassed to work for the preservation of wild species in the United States are afraid to even mention any admiration for such species in the desh. But when they’re gone, they’re gone. You can mock me for being a tourist, but this blog, and this whole enterprise, is partially about being semi-touristic participants in our ancestral homes. We talk about the beauty and experience of music, film, clothes, sports–just about every aspect of being in and from the desh–without constantly noting the socioeconomic impact of these things. I got some real and wonderful joy out of seeing dolphins that are unique to the desh–more unique than lime pickle or a musical style. It was a meaningful part of my experience of my ancestral district. I’d like my grandchildren to have the same experience. Of course I want to preserve that experience in a way that is respectful of the livelihood and development of the communities that live there. But it’s not going to be preserved at all without keeping an eye on it. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. Further more, I never said anything about Captain Planet villains, and there’s no inherent reason for a dichotomy between sustainable development and ecological preservation. Sometimes they can even drive each other, with a little brain power. But not if we don’t note the issue.

The value of tracking and focusing on the big mammals, as Camille and Tamasha have hinted at, is partially that they are like the canaries in the coal mine. (It’s not such a broken analogy—coal mines are fairly simple environments, so a smaller, more distant organism like a canary is a good measure.) They are capstone species–the top of the food chain, the smaller populations–and so their health gives us some idea about the whole system’s health. These particular ones are very unique, some of the rarest and most unique large mammals around–they are a part of South Asia’s special ecological character. And yes, they are more empathetic because they are mammals and large–and empathy is important in environmental activism. It’s hard get focus and inspiration from plankton and prawns, but if you want healthy dolphins you’ll soon learn to want healthy plankton and prawns too. I noted the dolphins because they plucked a deep memory of mine. But the sharks and the fish and frogs and the turtles are all important too.

Sriram, I think pollution is a major concern but not the focus of this report; also the rivers are grouped by #1 concern, but each river is threatened by other problems as well.

Sonia–my hope is that even when people aren’t leaving comments they are thinking about it.

DJ DP: Wine, much?

Anna, Shruti: Aww.

SM I: Sorry!

Perhaps we have anthropomorphized them because they are mammals? Save the whales, and all that…