Inia geoffrensis

– Vulnerable

Taxonomy

Kingdom:

ANIMALIA

Phylum:

CHORDATA

Class:

MAMMALIA

Order:

CETACEA

Family:

INIIDAE

Scientific Name:

Inia geoffrensis

Species Authority:

(Blainville, 1817)

Common Name/s:

English	—	AMAZON RIVER DOLPHIN, BOTO, BOUTU, PINK RIVER DOLPHIN
French	—	DAUPHIN DE L'AMAZONE, INIA
Spanish	—	BUFEO

Taxonomic Notes:

Was in the 1996-2002 IUCN Red Lists under the family Platanistidae.

Assessment Information

Red List Category & Criteria:

VU A1cd ver 2.3 (1994)

Year Assessed:

1996

Annotations:

Needs updating

Assessor/s:

Cetacean Specialist Group

Justification:

Extract from Reeves et al. (2003, p. 51): "The Boto is less threatened than the other two obligate freshwater cetacean species (Lipotes vexillifer and Platanista gangetica). It is distributed widely throughout much of the Amazon and Orinoco river basins. Three suspecies are recognized: I. g. geoffrensis in the Amazon basin (except for the Madeira drainage in Bolivia above the Teotonio rapids); I. g. boliviensi in the upper Madeira drainage; and I. g. humboldtiana in the Orinoco basin. There is no evidence of a major reduction in the species’ historic range. Abundance estimates are available only for relatively small segments of the total range, but there are probably tens of thousands of Botos in total.

Although there is no regular hunt for Botos, they are sometimes killed and maimed deliberately by fishermen to protect their catch and gear, or in retaliation for perceived competition for fish resources. Most human-caused mortality is incidental. However, in the absence of any systematic effort to record the bycatch, and with so little information on the species’ abundance and population biology, it is impossible to determine whether there are significant conservation problems. With growing human populations in Amazonia and Orinoquia, the conflicts between fisheries and dolphins are certain to intensify. Similarly, although water development has so far been much less extensive in the Amazon and Orinoco than in the large Asian rivers inhabited by river dolphins, several dams have already fragmented the Amazonian Boto population, and many more have been proposed (Best and da Silva 1989, IWC 2001). As mercury is often used to separate gold from soil and rock in mining operations along the Amazon (Pfeiffer et al. 1993), where mining for gold is pervasive if not rampant, contamination of the dolphins’ food web is a further concern (Aula et al. 1995)."

History:

1988	-	Vulnerable (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1988)
1990	-	Vulnerable (IUCN 1990)
1994	-	Vulnerable (Groombridge 1994)

Geographic Range

Countries:

Native:

Bolivia; Brazil; Colombia; Ecuador; Guyana; Peru; Venezuela

Population

Population Trend:

Habitat and Ecology

System:

Freshwater

List of Habitats:

5.1	Wetlands (inland) - Permanent Rivers/Streams/Creeks (includes waterfalls)

Threats

List of Threats:

1.4.6	Habitat Loss/Degradation - Infrastructure development - Dams (ongoing)
4.1.1.3	Accidental mortality - Bycatch - Fisheries-related - Entanglement (ongoing)
5	Persecution (ongoing)
6.3.3	Pollution (affecting habitat and/or species) - Water pollution - Commercial/Industrial (present, future)

Bibliography

Bibliography:

Aula, I., Braunschweiler, H. and Malin, I. 1995. The watershed flux of mercury examined with indicators in the Tucurui reservoir in Para, Brazil. The Science of the Total Environment 17: 97–107.

Best, R.C. and da Silva, V.M.F. 1989. Biology, status and conservation of Inia geoffrensis in the Amazon and Orinoco basins. In: W.F. Perrin, R.L. Brownell Jr., Zhou Kaiya and Liu Jiankang (eds) Biology and Conservation of the River Dolphins, pp. 23–34. IUCN/SSC Occasional Paper No. 3, Gland, Switzerland.

Groombridge, B. (ed.) 1994. 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.

IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre. 1988. 1988 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

IUCN. 1990. 1990 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

IWC. 2001. Annex K. Report of the standing sub-committee on small cetaceans. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 3 (Supplement): 263–291.

Pfeiffer, W.C., Lacerda, L.D., Salamons, W. and Malm, O. 1993. Environmental fate of mercury from gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon. Environmental Reviews 1: 26–37.

Reeves, R.R., Smith, B.D., Crespo, E.A. and di Sciara, G.N. (compilers) 2003. Dolphins, Whales and Porpoises: 2002-2010 Conservation Action Plan for the World's Cetaceans. IUCN/SSC Cetacean Specialist Group. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

Citation:	Cetacean Specialist Group 1996. Inia geoffrensis. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 29 August 2008.
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