This Makes Us Blubber

Pacific gray whale population may still be severely depleted

Posted at 1:50 PM on 11 Sep 2007

The Pacific gray whale, long held up as an environmental success story, may not have made as impressive a comeback as once thought. Thanks to a widespread ban on commercial whaling, the Pacific gray whale became the first marine mammal to be taken off the endangered species list in 1994. When whales began dying off around 1999, scientists assumed populations were naturally stabilizing at a norm of 20,000 whales or so. But researchers publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences did a genetic analysis of whale DNA which they say suggests that centuries ago, up to 118,000 whales may have swum the Pacific, which would mean that current populations are still significantly lacking. Many scientists are pointing fingers for whale decline at a dwindling food supply, which is being impacted by -- say it with us now -- global warming.

sources: Associated Press, BBC News, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle
see also, in Grist: Eastern Pacific gray whales, tired and hungry, are breeding less

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inflexibility of the ESA

The Endangered Species Act has done a lot of good for a lot of plants and animals. But it is a pity that its rule-bound operations can be so frustrating. Ideally, this impressive genetic analysis of the gray whale, which for a while was considered a success story of the ESA, should prompt a quick process of re-examination and re-listing.

Also, conservationists are now in a tough spot, seeing that anti-regulation anti-wildlife-protection conservatives have for some time now been threatening to kill the ESA as being ineffective, achieving nothing but to bring inconvenience and grief to (usually) Western landowners. To demonstrate that the ESA works, therefore, some conservationists have felt pressured to support lowering the threat level for Yellowstone grizzlies and northern Rockies gray wolves, though most conservationists feel strongly that it is almost surely too soon to do that.

And now, so radical a shift in opinion on the gray whale might very well convince the anti-ESA faction that the conservationists plainly do not know what they are doing, and have no more credibility.

More positively -- not that there is anything to celebrate -- , the gray whale can join the polar bear and those two Florida corals as an anti-global-warming postercritter.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 8:40 PM on 13 Sep 2007

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