2023-10-18 08:43:22
Drought and heat have led to the deaths of more than 150 dolphins in a week in a lake in Brazil’s Amazon region. Environmentalists reported that an estimated ten percent of the dolphins in Lake Tefé have died. Water temperatures of more than 39 degrees had previously been measured in the lake. According to the Mamirauá research institute and the environmental organization WWF, experts discovered 153 dolphin carcasses in Lake Tefé in the last week of September.
There were 130 Amazon dolphins and 23 Tucuxi dolphins. Both species are critically endangered and are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
Lake Tefé is located in the heart of the Amazon region in northwestern Brazil at the mouth of the river of the same name in the Amazon. A severe drought and high temperatures had also led to low water levels in rivers and fish deaths in the region. The consequences are “devastating,” said WWF nature conservation specialist Mariana Paschoalini Frias. The dolphin and fish deaths affect the “entire local ecosystem”.
Dolphins are one of the so-called bioindicators in ecosystems, which can be used to identify the effects of certain influences on their environment. “What happens to them is also reflected in other species, including humans,” explained Paschoalini Frias.
Brazil’s government sent emergency aid to the state of Amazonas at the end of September because of the drought. Most of the four million inhabitants are indigenous. Fish are an important source of food for them and the rivers are important transport routes: people move around the Amazon and its many tributaries primarily by boat.
According to experts, the dry season in the Amazon region was made worse this year by the El Niño weather phenomenon. Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said the global temperature rise caused by climate change has made the situation even worse.
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