Union minister of state for forests Jayanthi Natarajan on Wednesday announced a recovery programme for saving critically endangered species and their habitats.

Under the initiative, 16 species have been identified for support. This includes snow leopard, bustards (including floricans), dolphin, hangul, Nilgiri tahr, marine turtles, dugongs and coral reefs, edible nest swiftlet, Asian wild buffalo, Nicobar megapode, Manipur brow-antlered deer, vultures, Malabar civet, Indian rhinoceros, asiatic lion, swamp deer and jerdon’s courser.

The mystery surrounding the deaths of at least 877 dolphins in Peru deepened on Wednesday as the government said human activity was not to blame but failed to pinpoint a natural cause for the massive die-off.

A final report from the Peruvian government's Ocean Institute, which manages one of the world's richest marine ecosystems, said the dolphins did not die from a lack of food, hunting by fishermen, poison from pesticides, heavy metal contamination, an infection or a virus.

A Peruvian minister has denied claims that explosions used in oil exploration are to blame for the deaths of hundreds of dolphins.

Fisheries Minister Gladys Triveno said a government investigation showed that natural causes were to blame.

She contradicted a study by an environmental group which suggested that explosions had caused the deaths.

The animals have washed up along Peru's northern coastline since the beginning of the year.

The Biodiversity Management Committees of the coastal local bodies will be actively involved in the campaign. Information on declining marine biodiversity, threats faced by the marine ecosystem, sustainable livelihood and conservation measures will be highlighted, he said.

The Kerala campaign will be led by the district coordinators of the board in association with experts in conservation, ecology and environment. The programme is funded by the National Biodiversity Authority.

Late last year, fishermen began finding dead dolphins, hundreds of them, washed up on Peru’s northern coast. Now, seabirds have begun dying, too, and the government has yet to conclusively pinpoint a cause.

Officials insist that the two die-offs are unrelated. The dolphins are succumbing to a virus, they suggest, and the seabirds are dying of starvation because anchovies are in short supply.

Six years after the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, was declared "functionally extinct" by scientists, another marine mammal appears on the edge of extinction in China's hugely degraded Yangtze River. In less than two months, 32 Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis), a subspecies of the finless porpoise, have been dead found in Dongting and Poyang Lakes in the Yangtze, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Of the 24 Indus River dolphins found dead in January, 18 had reportedly died from poisoning as fishermen misused the Benazir card for excessive catch, said Sindh Wildlife Minister Dr Dayaram in the Sindh Assembly on Monday.

The fishermen used poisonous substance to maximize catch, said the minister while responding to a question asked by PML-F’s Nusrat Abbasi during a question hour pertaining to the wildlife department.

On Monday, at 8pm, Bandra resident Benedict Suarez noticed a blood-stained carcass of a dolphin at the Bandstand promenade. Suarez, who is a member of the citizen’s group Eagle Brigade, informed local corporator Asif Zakaria who, in turn, alerted the civic officials about the dead dolphin.