Pakistan stitches a 400-kilometre lifeline for its blind dolphins

The Indus river dolphin — blind, whiskered, navigating muddy water by sonar — has been climbing back from just 617 animals in 2001 to around 2,000 today. Now Pakistan has given that recovery room to grow: the Punjnad Indus River Dolphin Sanctuary, declared in June 2026, protects nearly 200 kilometres of the Indus in Punjab and links up with an existing reserve in Sindh, forming one continuous 400-kilometre stretch of legally guarded river. WWF-Pakistan, which has worked on the dolphins since the 1990s, helped make the case. The bhulan, as locals call it, finally has a corridor as long as its comeback.