Chapter 11 — Species of Special Concern 



the authorized activities on polar bears. The Service 

 also indicated that extensive measures would be 

 implemented to protect polar bears if Congress 

 authorizes oil and gas development within the Arctic 

 National Wildlife Refuge and that, in its view, it was 

 presumptuous to speculate about potential exploration 

 or development scenarios before Congress acted. 



At the end of 1991, the Commission was consid- 

 ering the issues described above and in Chapters VII 

 and Vni to decide what if any additional actions are 

 necessary to conserve polar bears and their habitat in 

 Alaska and to ensure that the United States is meeting 

 its obligations under the International Agreement on 

 Conservation of Polar Bears. 



Northern Right Whale 

 {Eubalaena glacialis) 



The northern right whale is the most endangered 

 large whale in the world. Remnant stocks survive in 

 both the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans. 

 Worldwide, northern right whales may number fewer 

 than 400 animals. The closely related southern right 

 whale {Eubalaena australis), which occurs only in the 

 Southern Hemisphere and numbers a few thousand 

 individuals, is probably the second most endangered 

 of the great whales. 



The largest known stock of northern right whales 

 occurs seasonally in coastal waters off the eastern 

 United States and Canada. Photo-identification studies 

 suggest that the northwest Atlantic stock numbers 

 perhaps 300-350 animals. In spring and sunmier, 

 right whales are found regularly in certain waters 

 from less than a mile to a few tens of miles off Cape 

 Cod, Massachusetts, northern Maine, and southern 

 Nova Scotia. In winter, pregnant females and females 

 with young of the year occur in waters within a few 

 miles of the Georgia and northern Florida shores. 

 Whether these are all of the pregnant females about to 

 give birth and all females with young of the year and 

 where the remainder of the population over-winters 

 are unknown. No such concentrations of right whales 

 are known to exist in the eastern North Atlantic. 



Sightings of right whales in the North Pacific over 

 the past 50 years are so few and so widely scattered 



that there is no basis for assessing how many animals 

 remain in that ocean or where they are likely to 

 occur. They may well number no more than a few 

 tens of animals. In addition, there have been virtually 

 no reports of calves from the North Pacific for the 

 past several decades, and the population very well 

 could disappear before the end of this century. 



Right whales were brought to their precarious state 

 by commercial whaling. In fact, the species' common 

 name derives from the combination of factors that 

 made it the "right" whale to kill. It was prized for 

 the large quantity and high quality of its oil and 

 baleen; it occurred conveniently close to shore; it 

 swam slowly; and when killed, it tended to float. 

 Northern right whales were taken by Basque whalers 

 along the coast of southern Europe in the 1 1th century 

 and were probably the first whale to be hunted regu- 

 larly by a whaling industry. By the mid-1800s, they 

 were taken throughout their range in both the Atlantic 

 and Pacific Oceans; by the early 1900s, all known 

 stocks were commercially extinct and close to biologi- 

 cal extinction. 



Although done belatedly, right whales were the 

 first species to receive international protection from 

 commercial whalers. Through the first International 

 Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, which 

 entered into force in 1935, a ban on the harvest of 

 right whales was accepted by most whaling nations. 

 The hunting ban was later carried forward by the 

 International Whaling Commission under the 1946 

 International Convention for the Regulation of Whal- 

 ing and has been accepted by all whaling nations for 

 several decades. Right whales also receive protection 

 through their listing on Appendix I of the Convention 

 on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild 

 Fauna and Flora, their listing as endangered under the 

 U.S. Endangered Species Act, and their consideration 

 as depleted under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protec- 

 tion Act. 



Despite protection over the past 50 years, the 

 number of right whales remains perilously low and it 

 is not clear whether or at what rate their numbers may 

 have increased (or decreased) in recent decades. The 

 absence of any apparent signs of recovery may be 

 due, at least in part, to the very low levels to which 

 stocks were reduced and the species' inherently low 



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