Border dolphin almost extinct

Experts warn that an isolated population of Irrawaddy dolphins  residing in the Mekong River on the Laos-Cambodia border is on the verge of disappearing. While there are up to 89 dolphins making up the main population, the isolated transboundary dolphins were now “functionally extinct”.

Chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Randall Reeves said that the very small transboundary population of dolphins, which is thought to have been isolated for some time from the larger groups downstream in Kratie and Stung Treng, is essentially lost.

In 2007, photo-identification surveys, conducted by the government’s Fisheries Administration and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), recorded eight adult dolphins in this transboundary pool. Periodical photo-identification surveys indicated that this number fell to seven in 2009, six in 2012, three in 2018 and now just one, with an individual identity code ID#35, remaining in 2021.

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