Water and Wildlife Discovery Day at Oxford Botanic Gardens

On the 14th of July, as part of the Fair Water? exhibition, Water and Wildlife Discovery Day was hosted by the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens. The day was full of activities focusing on organisms that live close to fresh water. The visitors could participate in water quality testing, studying freshwater invertebrates, smartphone photography walks, botanical drawing and many more. A series of soapbox talks took place in the Herbaceous Border Lawn, featuring Oxford Water Network members.

Dr Abubakr Muhammad, the STEMS Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, engaged with the public on the relationship between biodiversity and river water quality focusing on the population of the blind river dolphins in the Indus River. He shared his experience with the work he did to build a sonar-based instrument to listen to, localize, and count the blind river dolphins in Pakistan.

"The Indus and its tributaries were teaming with tens of thousands of dolphins before large irrigation infrastructures were constructed. The engineering of the barrages was a clever solution to the heavy sedimentation of the river. However, the dolphins have paid a heavy price for human ingenuity as their population has fallen to less than 1000 by the end of the 20th century."

He mentioned that water pollution due to the growing populations in the river basin had caused stress on its biodiversity. However, according to his recent observations, there is a wider awareness of the Indus dolphins in Pakistan.

"Thanks to the efforts of government and non-governmental organizations related to wildlife conservation, the count has crossed two thousand in the most recent survey."

In the discussion that followed the talk, the audience asked many interesting questions on the echolocation capabilities of the dolphins, their significance for the local fishing communities, the legends and folklore surrounding the dolphins (the locals call them as ‘Bulhan’), and the story of irrigation development in the Indus.

"The case of the river dolphins points to an interesting motif in the complex relationship between society, environment, and technology."