River dolphins are among the world's most endangered cetaceans, facing threats from fishing bycatch, boat strikes, pollution, and dam construction that cause both population decline and individual suffering.
River dolphin welfare is threatened across multiple dimensions. Bycatch in gillnets causes drowning — cetaceans must surface to breathe, and entanglement causes panic and suffocation. Mercury bioaccumulation in Amazon river dolphins causes neurological damage affecting echolocation and navigation. Boat strikes cause traumatic injuries to animals that surface in river channels shared with heavy boat traffic. The extreme pollution of many river dolphin habitats causes chronic health problems including skin lesions and reproductive failure. The loss of the baiji — a species that survived for 20 million years before being extinguished in decades — stands as a sobering warning about what happens when welfare and conservation concerns are not acted upon urgently.