River dolphins are among the world's most endangered cetaceans, facing pollution, dam construction, and fishing impacts in freshwater systems across South America and Asia.
River dolphin welfare is inseparable from habitat conservation. These animals occupy freshwater systems that face the most severe pressures of any aquatic habitat: pollution, damming, overfishing, and direct killing. Mercury poisoning in Amazon river dolphins from gold mining causes neurological damage that impairs echolocation - effectively blinding animals that already have non-functional eyes and depend entirely on sound to navigate and hunt. The Chinese river dolphin's likely extinction represents both the worst conservation failure and the most extreme welfare endpoint. Preventing similar fates for remaining river dolphin species requires urgent ecosystem-level protection.