*NEWS*UN URGES PROTECTION FOR DOLPHINS

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UN urges protection for dolphins
The United Nations says additional protection measures are needed for dolphins and small whales.
A
new global survey, released at a conservation meeting in Kenya, finds
that more than 70% of species are at risk through snaring in fishing
nets.
Other major threats include intentional catching, pollution, habitat destruction and military sonar.
The UN Environment Programme (Unep) is calling for an upgrade of international protection on eight species.
It
wants the Ganges river dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin, Northern
right-whale dolphin and five others species to be given Appendix II
status under the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS).
Existing protection measures on a further seven species should also be extended, it says.
A CMS summit is taking place this week at Unep headquarters in Nairobi.
Well loved
“Small
cetaceans are amongst the most well loved and charismatic creatures on
the planet,” said Unep executive director Klaus Toepfer in a statement.
“Sadly
these qualities alone cannot protect them from a wide range of threats;
so I fully endorse measures to strengthen their conservation through
the CMS and other related agreements.”
Appendix II status does not
confer mandatory protection, but is designed to induce relevant
countries to draw up conservation agreements.
Two such agreements
for small cetaceans are already in place, one in the Baltic Sea, the
other covering the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
The Unep report attempts to calculate the relative importance of the various factors which put dolphins and whales at risk.
It finds that 26.5% of the threat comes from accidental bycatch, 24.9% from deliberate hunting, and 21.2% from pollution.
Two years ago a scientific study found that about 800 cetaceans die each day through being snared in fishing nets.
Other
factors identitied by the new report include habitat degradation,
depletion of fish stocks on which the cetaceans feed, culling, and
noise, for example from naval sonar.
Dolphins’ dive
Mark
Simmonds, director of science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation
Society, believes that the Unep report may underestimate the true scale
of the issue.
“What it’s doing is indicating where there’s very
strong evidence of a direct threat to a particular species,” he told
the BBC News website from the Nairobi meeting, “and it’s very difficult
to get that kind of evidence.
“Many of these species we know very little about, particularly the deep diving ones.
“On
the other hand, we know enough to say that pretty much all the river
dolphins are threatened, and in fact the next mammal to go extinct will
probably be a river dolphin – it’s as serious as that.”
Further
measures are being debated at the CMS meeting, including a proposal to
list the Mediterranean population of the short-beaked dolphin onto
Convention Appendix I.
This would oblige countries around the Med to
restore habitat and change trends which are contributing to the
dolphin’s demise – in this case, principally the reduction in stocks of
sardines and pilchards which it eats. 

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November 24, 2005 at 10:08 AM