After the Bush admininistration’s proposal for the polar bears protection, it is now the turn for the North Pacific right whale. To keep the world’s most endangered whale from going extinct, a conservation group is pressuring the U.S. government to protect it.
Apart from right whales in the North Atlantic, the conservation group, made the Bush administration propose, to get the North Pacific right whale its own endangered listing. This proposal is supposed to get finalized in a year.
Though, since 1973, the right whales are being listed as endangered, the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity is demanding a separate listing proposal for the mammals to draw attention to the few right whales left in the Pacific.
After the Pacific right whales were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1840s, which killed 15,000 in a single decade, they were thought to be marching toward certain extinction! But, even with a surprising number in the Bering Sea, turning up a couple of summers ago, it is believed that fewer than 100 exist off the Alaska coast presently.
Perhaps, a few hundred may still be left off the Russian coast!
Brendan Cummings, the ocean program director for the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity said,
We have the most endangered whale in the world and a proposal to open up its most important habitat to oil and gas development.