Amazon River Dolphins

Amazon River.  All river dolphins face a variety of threats because they live in large tropical rivers and share these areas with extensive human populations.  Northern Peru is one of the few places on earth where large populations of two species of river dolphins still occur - the pink river dolphin or Boto and the much smaller Tucuxi. 

Our river dolphin work in the headwaters of the Amazon river was  one of our longest running projects started in 1995  by the late Dr. Steven Leatherwood.  It is focused on understanding the habitat requirements of the Boto and the Tucuxi in the enormous Pacaya Samiria reserve.  The results of this project are helping us understand some of the basics of river dolphin biology - like how to count river dolphins in a systematic manner, what kinds of habitats the dolphins use and prefer, and how they behave in the dry season versus when the forest is flooded during the rainy season.