TDCP’s 120-kanal resort at Kot Addu sells a rare-wildlife view, but the same stretch of the Indus keeps losing dolphins to nets and low water.
LAHORE/KOT ADDU: Punjab is turning one of the world’s rarest mammals into a tourism draw, opening a government-run riverside resort at Taunsa Barrage whose main selling point is a chance to see the endangered Indus river dolphin from a terrace.
Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif announced the opening of the Tourism Development Corporation of Punjab (TDCP) Dolphin Resort on X, inviting followers to “imagine sipping your morning tea while watching the rare blind Indus dolphin leap through the river waves” and placing the project under her government’s Magnificent Punjab campaign.
The resort covers 120 kanals, roughly 15 acres, on the bank of the Indus near Kot Addu. In an Urdu message, the chief minister described it as an eco-friendly destination built to international tourism standards that combines upscale hospitality, terrace views, fine dining and “a sense of wildlife protection”, and said it would give visitors a rare close look at Pakistan’s most distinctive aquatic species.
TDCP’s own listing describes a family retreat with open lawns, landscaped gardens, a pond, children’s play areas, walking paths and seating that looks out over the river and the long barrage, with a restaurant, air-conditioned rooms, Wi-Fi, housekeeping and parking. TDCP social media accounts list 0309-0102222 for bookings and enquiries.
Neither the chief minister’s post nor TDCP’s listing gave the number of rooms, nightly rates, the cost of construction or whether the resort will be run by TDCP or leased to a private operator. The corporation has leased out several of its properties in the past. The Lahore Times has sought those details from TDCP.
The project has been a long time coming. In 2019, TDCP’s Multan office sent Lahore a feasibility report for an island resort reached by a two-kilometre boat ride near the barrage, an idea floated by local MPA Muhammad Ashraf Khan Rind. The completed resort sits on the riverbank instead.
The animal on the brochure
The Indus river dolphin, known locally as bhulan, lives almost entirely in Pakistan. Irrigation barrages have split it into isolated stretches of river. It has tiny eyes with no lens and finds its way and its food by echolocation, which is why it is called blind.
Its recovery is one of Pakistan’s quieter conservation successes. A peer-reviewed study by WWF-Pakistan and University of St Andrews scientists, published in Endangered Species Research in November 2025, estimated the population rose from 1,665 in 2011 to 1,987 in 2017, a 19.4 percent increase. The same study put 660 dolphins in the Taunsa-Guddu stretch, the reach that flows past the new resort, and 188 between Chashma and Taunsa.
Punjab’s share is small but significant. The province’s population is estimated at about 660, and the Punjab government recently notified the Panjnad Indus River Dolphin Wildlife Sanctuary over roughly 198 km of river down to Guddu Barrage, covering nearly two-thirds of those animals.
Visitors expecting a marine-park show may need to adjust. Unlike ocean dolphins, the bhulan rarely leaps clear of the water. It usually shows itself as a brief roll at the surface when it comes up to breathe, which is why patient early-morning watching, as the chief minister suggested, offers the best odds.
A stretch with a death record
The waters around Taunsa Barrage are among the riskiest for the species. In January 2025, Punjab Wildlife, the Fisheries Department and WWF rescued five dolphins, two adults and three calves, stranded by low water downstream of the barrage after a local NGO raised the alarm, and banned fishing in the barrage’s buffer zone.
A year later, in January 2026, a dolphin was found dead about 10 km downstream of the barrage near Kot Addu, and the decomposed body of a calf was found near the Kholingwala siphon. Local group Sindhu Bachao Tarla blamed stone work at the barrage and severe water shortages, while activists asked for fishing to be stopped until the annual maintenance closure ended. In September 2026, another dolphin died near Dera Ghazi Khan after being stranded when floodwater receded.
WWF-Pakistan Director General Hammad Naqi has said unsustainable fishing, including illegal and harmful nets, is the greatest immediate threat in Punjab’s stretch of the river. Pakistan is drafting a new five-year national dolphin conservation strategy to replace the 2011 action plan.
Tourism versus conservation
Wildlife-watching tourism can strengthen the case for protecting a species by giving local communities an income from live animals rather than from fishing. Villagers near the barrage have run informal boat trips for dolphin sightings for years, and students and families from across the country already travel to the site.
The resort’s success may depend on how closely it ties itself to the sanctuary rules. Conservationists generally recommend that boats keep their distance, slow down and avoid noise near feeding dolphins, which rely on sound to navigate. TDCP has not said whether it will set boating rules, train local guides, share revenue with nearby villages or fund the wildlife department’s rescue work during the winter low-water season.
Punjab has been building up its wildlife infrastructure, including Pakistan’s first wildlife hospital with 12 operation theatres, and officials say the dolphin is protected under provincial wildlife law. Steady river flows remain the bigger question, one tied to wider debates over water, including the Indus Waters Treaty dispute with India.
Putting south Punjab on the map
For Kot Addu, an agricultural and power-generation town in Muzaffargarh district more often in the news for floods than for holidays, the resort is a bid to give travellers a reason to stop. TDCP is promoting it alongside the Thal Desert Rally, which runs from November 5 to 8 across Muzaffargarh, Kot Addu and Layyah.
Business leaders have argued that climate and conservation work cannot be left to government alone, and Taunsa will test that idea. Whether the resort ends up protecting the dolphins or simply profiting from them will depend on what happens on the river during the dry winter months, when the dolphins are most at risk.
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