RIO DE JANEIRO — The bright pink color gives them a striking appearance in the muddy jungle waters. That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets for nets and harpoons as they swim fearlessly up to fishing boats.
Now, their carcasses are showing up in record numbers on riverbanks, their flesh torn away for fishing bait, causing researchers to warn of a growing threat to a species that has already disappeared in other parts of the world.
“The population of the river dolphins will collapse if these fishermen are not stopped from killing them,” said Vera da Silva, the top aquatic-mammals expert at the government’s Institute of Amazonian Research.
“We’ve been studying an area . . . for 17 years, and of late the population is dropping 7 percent each year.”
That translates to about 1,500 dolphins killed annually in the part of the Mamiraua Reserve of the western Amazon where da Silva studies the mammals.
Even the government acknowledges there is a problem. It is illegal to kill the dolphins without government permission — as with all wild animals in the Amazon — but little is being done to stop it.
Fewer than five agents are tasked with protecting wildlife in a region covering the western two-thirds of Amazonas state — more than twice the size of Texas, according to the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, the enforcement arm of the Environment Ministry.
About the river dolphin
Big flippers: Growing up to 8 feet long and weighing as much as 400 pounds, Amazon river dolphins are the largest of four species known to exist in South America and Asia.
Better bait: The dolphins are attractive to anglers for their fatty flesh, which is a highly effective bait for catching a type of catfish called piracatinga. Consumption in neighboring Colombia is driving the slaughter.
