59 



(iii) the level of confidence in the 



knowledge of the affected stock; 

 and 



(iv) the extent to which incidental 

 taking will likely cause or 

 contribute to their decline or 

 prevent their recovery to optimum 

 sustainable population levels." 



The Commission, in consultation with its Committee of 

 Scientific Advisors, developed and, in January 1990, provided 

 draft guidelines to the National Marine Fisheries Service and 

 other interested parties, including fisheries groups and 

 environmental organizations, for review and comment. Final, 

 recommended guidelines were developed taking into account 

 comments on the draft. The recommended guidelines were prl.vided 

 to the National Marine Fisheries Service in July 1990. The 

 commission also prepared and provided the Service a summary of 

 the substantive comments it received on the draft guidelines and 

 an explanation of how those comments were addressed. These 

 documents were provided to the Committee when they were forwarded 

 to the Service and we can provide additional copies if anyone did 

 not get them. 



In its recommended guidelines, the Commission noted the New 

 Principles for the Conservation of Wild Living Resources 

 formulated during two 1975 workshops sponsored by the President s 

 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 (Holt, S. J. and L. M. Talbot. 1978. New 

 Principles for the Conservation of Wild Living Resources. 

 Wildlife Monographs, No. 59. 33 pp.). Consistent with the new 

 principles, the Commission noted its belief that it would be 

 appropriate in certain cases to allow the incidental taking of 

 depleted as well as non-depleted species and population stocks of 

 marine mammals and that the general objectives of the regime to 

 govern marine mammal-fisheries interactions should be to: 



1. maintain the fullest possible range of management 

 options for future generations; 



2 restore depleted species and populations of marine 

 mammals to their optimum sustainable level with no 

 significant time delays; 



3. reduce the incidental take to as near zero as 

 practicable; and 



