WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Friday named the beluga whale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet an endangered species despite opposition from Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.
By affording the whale protection under the Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now will embark on an ambitious research effort to determine why the species is on the decline and whether any human activities in the area should be curtailed to protect its habitat.
Subsistence hunting took a toll on the Cook Inlet beluga population, which numbered as many as 1,300 in the 1970s but now stands at 375. The federal government limited beluga whale hunting to just five animals between 1999 and 2006, but the population has continued to decline roughly by 1.5 percent annually instead of growing by 2 percent to 4 percent per year, as scientists had predicted.
“In fact, we haven’t seen that level of recovery,” said Brad Smith, a marine mammal biologist with NOAA’s Fisheries Service.
Conservation groups had petitioned to list the Cook Inlet whales in March 1999, but NOAA initially decided that an end to hunting would halt the decline. In April 2006 the groups filed a new petition, and the agency proposed listing the population as endangered in 2007.
In August 2007, the Palin administration submitted 95 pages of data and comments in an effort to keep the whales off the list.
But Vicki Cornish — vice president of the marine wildlife conservation program at the Ocean Conservancy, an advocacy group — said Palin’s objections were not supported by the facts and that the listing “is long overdue.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
