Project Dolphin will be launched in 15 days: Prakash Javadekar

The Union Environment Ministry on Monday said it would launch the Project Dolphin on the line of much successful Project Tiger and Project Elephant in the next 15 days.

“The ministry will be launching a holistic Project Dolphin in another 15 days for the conservation and protection of the Dolphins in the rivers and in oceans of the country,” Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said at a meeting with the forest ministers and senior officials from the states.

In the Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the launching of Project Dolphin and Project Lion for the healthy growth of the two iconic species in the wild.

Project Dolphin will initially be a 10-year programme during which conservation concerns would be addressed besides aiding the river-dependent population in reducing river pollution for the benefit of the unique aquatic species.

As per an official assessment, there are about 3,700 Gangetic River Dolphins in the Indian rivers. They are sighted along deep river reaches in Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The Gangetic River Dolphin (Platanista gangetica) is a species of freshwater dolphins primarily found in the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and their tributaries in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Being an indicator species of river ecosystems, conservation of the Gangetic River Dolphin requires controlling river pollution to improve the availability of fishes.

On forest conservation, Javadekar told the state ministers that the Finance Commission had increased the weightage given to the forest conservation from the present level of 7% to 10%. This would give an additional incentive to the states to conserve their forest as they would receive more funds in the process of resource devolution.

The minister reminded the states that the compensatory afforestation fund (CAMPA) was meant only for greening India and not for paying salary. While 80% of the fund is to be utilised for afforestation, the remaining 20% is for capacity building.

Last year in August, the environment ministry released Rs 47,436 crore to 27 states for compensatory afforestation and other green activities. In February, the ministry released the CAMPA funds for Jammu and Kashmir (Rs 408.3 crore), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Rs 16.4 crore) and Chandigarh (Rs 11.03 crore), taking the total amount of money released from the CAMPA funds to Rs 47,872 crore.