Asia's river systems face collapse

[bemildred]

Water in the Indus River is so clouded that the native dolphin has in effect lost its eyesight and has to detect prey and other objects through sound waves.

More than half of all the industrial waste and sewage in China flows into a single waterway, the Yangtze. And tributaries of the Ganges, one of Asia's greatest cultural and religious treasures, are running dry because of the crippling burden of irrigation.

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It found that 21 of the world's greatest rivers, including the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges, Indus and Tigris-Euphrates in Asia, were struggling to survive against the tide of man-made pollution and the diversion of water through dams, pipes and irrigation.

"We're talking about a complete collapse of the system - they're so polluted, so over-extracted or so cut up by dams that it's really not functioning as a river anymore," said Tom Le Quesne, freshwater-policy officer at WWF. "It's a challenge that humanity faces not far off the scale of climate change."

Asia Times

[JackintheGreen]

1. Perhaps this is an embarassing admission

but as a researching anthropologist specializing in India (to be sure, the far south) I didn't know the Indus River had dolphins.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Nah. Would have been embarassing if you were a cetologist, though.

[Tanuki]

3. It apparently only lives in a very restricted range in Pakistan

so it's not surprising you wouldn't have encountered it.
http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/species_info.asp?id=66

[JackintheGreen]

4. It so pretty...as far as dolphins go.

And as Duke used to say at the end of G.I.Joe, "knowing is half the battle."