Kendrapara: The carcass of a bottlenose dolphin washed ashore in the Bhitarkanika National Park in Odisha’s Kendrapara district Wednesday, officials said.
The carcass of the female dolphin was about 8.2 ft long, they said.
The dolphin seemed to have died in the sea a few days back and washed ashore in the mangrove forest in Mahakalapada range, they added.
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“We buried the carcass after conducting a post-mortem examination,” said Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Sudrashan Gopinath Yadav.
The carcass was first spotted by locals who informed the Forest Department, he said.
Dolphin is categorised as endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List and enlisted in Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.
In the 2022 dolphin census in the waterbodies of the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary and the Bhitarkanika National Park, 550 were recorded. Among them were 281 bottlenose dolphins.
PTI