Freshwater river dolphins face extinction from dams, pollution, fishing gear entanglement, and boat strikes, making them among the most endangered and welfare-challenged cetaceans.
River dolphin welfare is a crisis compounded across multiple threats. Net-entangled animals experience drowning or injury; those contaminated by mercury suffer progressive neurological impairment; dam-fragmented populations are isolated in sections with inadequate prey. The baiji extinction — the first cetacean species lost in modern times — demonstrates the terminal endpoint of combined river dolphin threats when addressed too slowly. Individual welfare harms are inseparable from the conservation crisis: protecting individual dolphins from nets, pollution, and boat strikes is simultaneously a welfare intervention and a population survival strategy.