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Beluga Update: Q: What’s the current status of beluga whales in general? What about the Cook Inlet belugas? NL: Worldwide, beluga whales are doing OK. They are thought to number more than 100,000. They are an Arctic (and sometimes sub-Arctic) whale, difficult to count and to study in challenging environments. I would not be surprised to see belugas take a hit from the effects of global warming—the rapid changes that are so drastically affecting ice coverage and other environmental conditions in the north. In Alaska, four of the five stocks seem to have stable populations. The exception is the Cook Inlet population, genetically distinct and geographically isolated from the others. These whales are seriously depleted and have now been proposed for the Endangered Species list. [They have now been listed, since October 2008.] The latest population estimate, from surveys done in 2006, is 302 animals. [The 2008 and 2009 estimates were 375 and 321.] Q: What are people doing in Alaska to help protect the belugas? Are the different groups—the NMFS, local conservation groups, etc—working closer for this cause? NL: Some conservation groups and individuals in Alaska are working to protect the Cook Inlet belugas, but they have few resources with which to try to do this. It is mostly an educational effort, and a coalition of conservation groups petitioned to have the whales listed as endangered. Municipalities and corporate interests are working against protecting the belugas, because they fear an Endangered Species listing would inhibit economic growth. There is certainly no united effort to do what needs to be done to protect habitat and conduct research. The National Marine Fisheries Service has been required since 1999 to have a conservation plan in place; a draft of this was finally presented two years ago but has never been completed or adopted. If the Cook Inlet belugas are added to the Endangered Species list, a recovery plan will be required and critical habitat will be identified (although its actual protection will depend on economic values). Q: Are you personally involved in a local conservation group? If so, what is your group doing to help protect the whales? NL: I am somewhat involved with the coalition working to get an Endangered Species listing, not as a petitioner myself but as an advisor. I am also involved with the Cook Inletkeeper, one member of that coalition, which tries to keep track of beluga sightings and continually advocates for clean water and habitat protection in Cook Inlet. You can find that group’s beluga action page and more useful links at Cook Inletkeeper. Q: Have the toxin levels in belugas in the Cook Inlet risen? Are there higher levels of PCBs in the young? NL: The federal scientists have done almost no work on the Cook Inlet belugas in recent years, as a result of funding cuts, and toxin levels are not being monitored. Earlier work suggested that toxins (at least those tested) were not a significant problem for the Cook Inlet whales, which tested “cleaner” than Arctic whales. Samples from dead whales are now being collected, but there are no funds for a program of analysis. This is one reason that an Endangered Species listing is needed—to break loose some federal funding for essential research. Q: What message(s) (besides the need to save the beluga whales) would you like to convey to your readers, even now, three years after the hardcover edition was published? NL: I had meant my inquiry into the Cook Inlet belugas to provide some larger lessons about our relationships with animals and our efforts to “manage” them, and I believe that the book continues to do this. The message is that, if we can’t even save an animal that everyone loves and says they want to save, we had better do something about the system that is so dysfunctional. I believe we should let scientists do their work uncompromised by politics, and that we should respect that work, and I also believe that there are useful things we can learn about being responsible stewards from other systems—including traditional ones as practiced by indigenous peoples. As I say in my new preface to the book, while the Cook Inlet beluga situation remains precarious, I’m heartened that, at least, Americans are beginning to wake up to the facts of global warming and to recognize that taking care of our environment is not only essential to our survival (as a species) on the planet but is compatible with community and economic health. |
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Copyright 2004 Nancy Lord.
AlaskaWriter illustrations and site design copyright 2003, 2004
Sonya Senkowsky and AlaskaWriter. All rights reserved.