Cook Inlet belugas are now listed as endangered
Cook Inlet (Alaska) beluga whales — a population that has declined by half over the past decade — have been listed as an endangered species by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As with the Puget Sound killer whales, the agency was slow to list the population, having placed them in a “depleted” status under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Environmental groups sued to get the belugas listed, but the agency completed the listing before a judge could hear the case.
Dan Joling of the Associated Press quoted Craig Matkin, an independent biologist who has worked in South Central Alaska for 25 years. Matkin said the delay in the listing had held up a comprehensive research plan to find out why the population had not recovered after subsistence hunting was curtailed.
The concern is not just in numbers, Matkin said, but in distribution. Whales in recent years have been staying in northern Cook Inlet near Anchorage.
“They’re just gone from these areas,” he said of his own home near in Homer, near the tip of the Kenai Peninsula and about 100 miles from Anchorage. “Why they aren’t coming down into this habitat is a question I’d like to answer.”
Joling’s story goes on to describe what can be expected now, following the listing.
John Schoen, senior scientist of Audubon-Alaska said in press release from the Center for Biological Diversity: “Hopefully the listing decision is not too late for the Cook Inlet beluga whale population’s recovery. It is unfortunate that the population was not listed in 2000, when the scientific evidence was overwhelming that it should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.”
New York Times reporter William Yardley made the point that this was another setback for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who lost in her argument against listing the polar bear and now the beluga and has taken a controversial stand on climate change.
For a lot more information about the Cook Inlet whales, visit NOAA’s Web site on the belugas.
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Tags: beluga whale, Sarah Palin
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October 21st, 2008 at 7:53 am
There is no species known as the Cook Inlet Beluga Whale. The species, Delphinapterus leucas, has a circumpolar range that includes the coasts of Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia. Cook Inlet is a tiny portion of that range and the “Cook Inlet Beluga Whales” are a tiny portion of the species, proper. When people talk of abuses of the Endangered Species Act, it is this type over-reach to which they frequently refer. There is, similarly, no “Puget Sound Chinook” species, by the way. Carried to its illogical extreme, one could invoke the ESA to protect “Chico Creek Chinook” or, even, “The Jones’ Property Chinook” for those few fish that spawn on an individual’s property.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:16 am
Blue Light, you are right that this has been a controversial part of the Endangered Species Act through the years. Many listings have been approved on denied on whether a specific population has unique enough characteristics to be protected.
But Congress always intended that the law protect more than an entire species as defined by broad taxonomy. The original Endangered Species Act defined species as “any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants and any other group of fish or wildlife of the same species or smaller taxa in common spatial arrangement that interbreed when mature”.
Because of problems with the definition, the act was amended in 1978 to define species as “any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment (DPS) of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.”
So the focus turned to what constitutes a “distinct population segment,” and this has become a complex and controversial issue for many species, including the Southern Resident (Puget Sound) killer whales.
I won’t go into it here, but I will recommend an excellent analysis by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that addresses salmon, as well as an article by lawyer Tatjana Rosen in The Encyclopedia of Earth. If anyone wants to pursue the issue for a given species, one must turn to the “status review and extinction risk assessment” to see why federal officials deem it important to save a given population. An update for the Cook Inlet beluga whales includes this comment:
“The population of belugas in Cook Inlet is discrete from other Alaskan and Russian beluga populations in the Arctic. Physically, these whales are isolated from other populations by the Alaska Peninsula. Despite extensive, dedicated marine mammal survey effort, the lack of sightings along the southern side of the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands chain suggests that the Cook Inlet population does not disperse into the Bering Sea…”
USFWS distinct population policy: http://www.fws.gov/endangered/POLICY/Pol005.html
Encyclopedia of Earth: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Distinct_Population_Segment_policy_(1996)_under_the_Endangered_Species_Act,_United_States
Beluga risk assessment (PDF 2.9 mb): http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Publications/ProcRpt/PR2008-08.pdf
October 21st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Yes, I know all that. I, personally, think it has been “used” to further a political agenda. And those using it thusly should not be able to say they are following the best available “science”. Personally.
But, let me ask you this: If a “distinct population segment” is artificially augmented and those, let’s say “hatchery fish”, and native fish interbreed when mature, should those hatchery fish be counted as members of that population?
October 21st, 2008 at 2:07 pm
This is where we need a fisheries biologist to weigh in.
I know just enough to be dangerous — such as the idea of limiting efforts to boost natural stocks with hatchery production for only three generations, such as the genetic weakness caused by inbred hatchery fish, such as efforts to keep hatchery and wild stocks separate, such as the overall goal of restoring distinct wild salmon runs without interference from hatchery fish…
Anyone out there care to help us out with this question?
October 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Actually, Chris, the question is before a judge right now.
I’ve always found it inconsistent that – under the ESA – we augmented our endangered pocket rabbit (I think that’s it) population with a captive breeding program, but can’t do that with salmon and hatcheries.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Pygmy rabbit.
http://www.pacificbio.org/ESIN/Mammals/PygmyRabbit/pygmyrabbit.html
October 21st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I must plead temporary amnesia about the hatchery vs. wild lawsuit. How could I forget after writing about this issue for several years?
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2007/jun/13/judge-wild-salmon-are-key-to-protections/
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2007/aug/16/judge-wild-fish-hatchery-salmon-can-be-counted/
I even missed the fact that the case was in court this week.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_re_us/salmon_listings
So I’ll guess we’ll know the legal answer to your question before long.
As for captive breeding programs, such as with the pygmy rabbit, it’s my understanding that these efforts are designed to return animals to the wild. The population won’t be considered recovered until they can sustain themselves and allow natural selection to restore “wildness” to the population.
Do you think there’s a distinction between how biologists and lawyers look at this issue?
October 21st, 2008 at 5:16 pm
If the hatchery salmon and the wild salmon intermingle what is likely to be the result?
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:54 am
Again, I’m not an expert, but I’ve talked to plenty of biologists on this issue. Wild salmon are naturally adapted to the stream in which they reside. Breeding them with fish adapted to even the best hatchery conditions — especially hatchery fish imported from another region — cannot be a good thing for the overall vitality of the stock.
If I’m wrong on any of these points, I hope my biologist friends will correct me, on or offline.
October 24th, 2008 at 12:33 am
I thought hatchery fish were turned loose at some point…not kept in a hatchery all their lives.
If they are turned loose…it seems likely only the strongest will make it back making it more worthy of reproduction… but I don’t know…
October 24th, 2008 at 7:33 am
“As for captive breeding programs, such as with the pygmy rabbit, it’s my understanding that these efforts are designed to return animals to the wild. The population won’t be considered recovered until they can sustain themselves and allow natural selection to restore “wildness” to the population.”
Are tribes allowed to mass-slaughter pygmy rabbits while their populations are rebuilding?