MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1992 
possible U.S.-Russian agreement on walrus conserva- 
tion (see Chapter X). Advice on the contents of the 
implementation plan was subsequently provided to the 
Service late in 1992. As of the end of 1992 it was the 
Commission’s understanding that a draft walrus 
conservation plan and implementation plan would be 
made available by the Service to the Commission and 
others for review in January 1993. 
Subsistence Harvests of Walruses 
Walruses, like a number of other marine mammals, 
constitute an important traditional subsistence resource 
for Native peoples in coastal Alaska and eastern 
Siberia. They provide food and raw materials essen- 
tial for survival in the far North, and walrus ivory is 
used to make traditional native handicrafts that are 
important to the economies of Native villages. For 
these reasons, the Marine Mammal Protection Act 
provides an exception to the moratorium on taking 
marine mammals. Under the exception, Alaska 
Natives may harvest marine mammals, including 
walruses, for traditional subsistence and handicraft 
purposes, provided it is done in a non-wasteful 
manner. 
Native hunters use boats and rifles to harvest 
walruses hauled out on ice or land. Most animals 
taken by Alaska Natives are harvested early in the 
spring as the animals follow the retreating pack ice 
north into the Chukchi Sea. Data on Native harvest 
levels from 1970 to 1989 are shown in Table 6. 
Because an unknown number of animals that are shot 
escape mortally wounded and sink without being 
retrieved, the data in this table do not include all 
animals killed in the harvests. An estimate from the 
1960s (the most recent available) suggests that perhaps 
40 percent of the animals killed in the Alaskan harvest 
are not retrieved. 
Information on harvest levels since 1989 is uncer- 
tain because the Fish and Wildlife Service suspended 
its walrus harvest monitoring program in 1990 and 
1991 due to funding constraints. As a result, the only 
harvest data gathered in 1990 and 1991 were from a 
program begun by the Service late in 1988 to mark 
and tag walrus tusks as a way to help prevent illegal 
trade (see also Chapter VIII). In 1990 and 1991 the 
Service tagged tusks from 1,458 and 2,143 animals, 
respectively. _ Because calves and other animals 
without tusks need not be tagged and because some 
hunters may have been reluctant to participate in the 
new program or uncertain of how to do so, it is not 
clear how data for these years compare with harvest 
data for earlier years. 
Data on subsistence harvests, as well as biological 
samples from harvested animals gathered as part of 
the walrus harvest monitoring program, have been a 
fundamental component of past walrus research and 
management efforts. For this reason, when the 
Commission wrote to the Service on 23 December 
1991 transmitting the draft conservation plan, it also 
recommended that the Service take immediate action 
to re-institute the walrus harvest monitoring program. 
In its 5 February 1992 reply, the Service advised the 
Commission that it had received a supplemental 
appropriation from Congress that would be used to 
reestablish a walrus harvest monitoring program. 
The program was instituted in time for the 1992 
spring hunt, and individuals were placed in three 
major walrus harvesting villages to monitor the 
harvest during the peak hunting season. Although the 
1992 effort was not as extensive as the earlier pro- 
gram, the Service plans to continue the current level 
of monitoring in 1993 and to expand coverage to 
additional villages beginning in 1994. The program 
also has enabled the Service to renew collection of 
biological samples from harvested animals. To help 
expand monitoring efforts in the future and to involve 
coastal village residents, the Service also instituted a 
program to train Native villagers in the procedures for 
collecting harvest data and biological samples. 
As of the end of 1992 results of the 1992 harvest 
monitoring program were not yet available. Tusks 
from 1,527 walruses were tagged under the Service’s 
marking and tagging program in 1992. Recent data 
on Russian walrus harvests are not available. As 
shown in Table 6, from 1985 to 1989 Soviet hunters 
took an average of 4,184 animals a year. 
Other Activities 
In addition to the recommendations noted above, in 
its 23 December 1991 letter the Commission urged 
