MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1995 



Improving Management of 

 Marine Living Resources 



As discussed elsewhere in this report, many species 

 and populations of marine mammals have been 

 severely depleted by unregulated or poorly regulated 

 commercial hunting. Some species and population 

 stocks also have been affected adversely by incidental 

 take in commercial fisheries and by habitat degrada- 

 tion and destruction. Many species and stocks of fish 

 and other marine living resources also have been 

 severely depleted by unregulated or poorly regulated 

 harvesting, by incidental take in fisheries, and by 

 habitat degradation and destruction. Summary data 

 provided in the National Marine Fisheries Service's 

 1993 Report on the Status of U.S. Living Marine 

 Resources indicate, for example, that 40 percent of 

 the exploited fishery stocks in U.S. waters are over- 

 utilized and 42 percent are below the level necessary 

 to support the long-term potential yield. 



Actions taken by the Marine Mammal Commission 

 to identify the principal causes of ineffective manage- 

 ment and how they might be avoided are described 

 below. 



Basic Principles for the Conservation of 

 Wild Living Resources 



In 1974 and 1975 the Council on Environmental 

 Quality, the World Wildlife Fund-U.S. , the Ecological 

 Society of America, the Smithsonian Institution, and 

 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature 

 and Natural Resources cooperatively sponsored a 

 series of workshops to develop basic guiding princi- 

 ples for the conservation of wild living resources. 

 The workshop participants concluded that traditional 

 single-species, maximum sustainable yield manage- 

 ment principles were outdated and recommended 

 adoption of new ecosystem-oriented principles. The 

 workshop results were published in a 1978 monograph 

 by S.J. Holt and L.M. Talbot entitled "New Princi- 

 ples for the Conservation of Wild Living Resources." 



Over the next 15 years, the "new" principles were 

 not fully integrated into either domestic or internation- 

 al fisheries and wildlife conservation programs. The 

 reason for this was not evident. Therefore, the 



Commission contracted in 1992 for a global review of 

 wildlife conservation practices and in 1994 held an 

 international workshop to review and revise the 

 principles set forth in the 1978 monograph to make 

 them more useful. 



The following were the principal findings and 

 conclusions of the consultations and workshop: 



• maintenance of healthy populations of wild living 

 resources in perpetuity is inconsistent with growing 

 human consumption of and demand for those 

 resources; 



• the goal of conservation should be to maintain 

 present and future options by maintaining biologi- 

 cal diversity at genetic, species, population, and 

 ecosystem levels, and as a general rule neither the 

 resources nor the other components of the ecosys- 

 tems of which they are a part should be perturbed 

 beyond natural boundaries of variation; 



• assessment of the possible ecological and socioeco- 

 nomic effects of resource use should precede both 

 proposed use and proposed restriction of ongoing 

 use of a resource; 



• regulation of living resource uses must be based on 

 an understanding of the structure and dynamics of 

 the ecological system of which the resource is a 

 part and take into account economic and sociologi- 

 cal influences affecting resource use, both directly 

 and indirectly; 



• the full range of knowledge and skills from the 

 natural and social sciences must be brought to bear 

 on conservation problems; 



• effective conservation requires understanding and 

 taking account of the motives, interests, and values 

 of all users and stakeholders but not by simply 

 averaging their positions; and 



• effective conservation requires communication that 

 is interactive, reciprocal, and continuous. 



The workshop report and the report of the interna- 

 tional consultations are expected to be published in the 

 first half of 1996. 



Analysis of Fishery Conservation Agreements 



Most international agreements governing taking of 

 marine living resources were concluded decades ago 

 when commercial landings of fish and shellfish were 



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