Bolivian President Juan Evo Morales has taken a special interest in protecting the Bolivian Pink Dolphin with new legislation that calls upon the nation’s armed forces to protect the animal.
But a section of the government is pressing ahead with mining oil, gas and highway development, with Morales ‘playing it both ways’, forced to postpone the highway that would have destroyed Tipnis, but trying to fudge a referendum to let his key supporters, coca farmers and colonists, destroy the jungle.
Locally known in the Amazon as “boto,” these dolphins are threatened by fisherman who view them as competition, mercury poisoning caused by illegal gold mining operations, river damming, fishing nets, pollution, and erosion in its habitat.
Now deemed a “national treasure,” Inia boliviensis is now protected by fishing bans and an initiative to maintain the river basins that the dolphin inhabits. It has a brain 20% bigger than a human.
The Bolivian Government is the first ever in the Americas to have an Indigenous majority, the first in over 500 years of colonization, slavery and brutal exploitation. One rich lowland province, Santa Cruz, however has a non indigenous majority and is threatening to break away.
The Bolivian pink dolphin sports a long, curved beak and uses echolocation to hunt down its prey. The animal is known to have powerful jaws with teeth proficient at crushing fish. After killing its meal, the dolphin swallows its prey whole and regurgitates its bones later.
The species is shares similarities to other dolphins found in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. The pink dolphin is known to weight between 65 and 90 pounds.
In 2010, Bolivia hosted a climate change summit in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba.
“I would say this is the only scenario to make balance between the pressure that at this moment the corporations are putting on the government versus the pressure that can emerge, can arise from civil society.”
Bolivia’s “bolo” legislation is just the latest in wider environmentally conscious agenda.
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