Beluga Whales - Cook Inlet Keeper

The Cook Inlet Beluga Whale –

Take Action Now to Protect this Cook Inlet Icon!

Threats to the Cook Inlet beluga whale: Cook Inlet is the most populated and fastest growing watershed in Alaska. The state’s largest city – Anchorage – lies adjacent to some of the most important beluga habitat in the region. Polluted run-off from rain and snowmelt, combined with large sewage discharges, pour directly into prime beluga feeding, mating and birthing habitats. Cook Inlet is also the birthplace of commercial oil and gas development in Alaska, and underwater seismic blasting, toxic dumping from offshore platforms, and regular leaks and spills threaten the whales and their habitat. The U.S. Army also retains a presence in Cook Inlet, and its bombing range at Eagle River Flats on Fort Richardson regularly showers toxic and other pollutants into areas that support belugas and their prey. Cook Inlet is also a major shipping hub and fishing center, and ship traffic, noise, port dredging and prey disturbance may also be affecting belugas.

In addition to existing development, a series of proposals raises serious concerns about the future for beluga whales in Cook Inlet. For example, the Port of Anchorage plans to fill over 135 acres of beluga habitat as part of a major expansion project, and proposed dredging associated with the expansion will impacts hundreds of additional acres. Another proposed addition to the Port is the Department of Homeland Security’s “Integrated Anti-Swimmer Device” – a complex sonar array designed to thwart waterborne attacks on the Port. Sonar is well-known to cause problems with whale “echolocation,” but information on IAS impacts to belugas has not yet been determined. Furthermore, the Chuitna Coal Project, lying southwest of Anchorage, is slated to begin permitting this summer, and if developed, would add another major industrial port in an area important to belugas. Finally, plans continue to progress for the Knik Arm Crossing, a new bridge and fill project that would bisect some of the most important beluga habitat in the entire Inlet, just outside of Anchorage.

Aside from aerial surveys and limited tissue sampling, there has been no concerted effort to understand even the most basic behaviors of the Cook Inlet beluga, let alone any serious attempts to understand the individual and cumulative effects from industrial activities. Cook Inlet boasts the highest tidal range in the United States, and one or more mass strandings on the region’s shifting shoals could be enough to push the beluga over the brink to extinction.

Background on the Cook Inlet beluga whale: Alaska Native traditional knowledge tells of beluga subsistence hunts for the past several hundred years in Cook Inlet, and early homesteaders are known to have hunted for food, sport and whale bones. In the early-to-mid 1990’s, unregulated subsistence hunting (permitted for Native Alaskans under federal and international law) led to high mortality within the Cook Inlet beluga stock. In 1999, Congress passed legislation making it illegal for anyone to “take” a Cook Inlet beluga whale unless such harvest occurred under a cooperative management agreement between Native Alaska hunters and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Subsequent co-management agreements sharply curtailed subsistence hunting, and NMFS biologists predicted the Cook Inlet beluga population would rebound to sustainable levels. In 2000, NMFS refused to list the whale under the Endangered Species Act, and instead chose the less rigorous protections afforded by a “depleted” listing under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Five years after the MMPA listing – in March 2005 - NMFS finally published the draft Conservation Plan required by the MMPA, and as of May 2006, the final plan had yet to be released. In April 2006, with the latest surveys estimating only 278 whales remaining, NMFS opened public comment on a status review, to determine whether the Cook Inlet beluga whale should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Take Action Now

INLETKEEPER’S SOLUTIONS:

Inletkeeper is pressing state and federal resource managers to designate critical habitat for the beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act, so areas where whales feed, mate and birth can be protected. In the meantime, Inletkeeper is educating the public and the media about the plight of this Cook Inlet icon, and challenging short sighted proposals that pollute or destroy important beluga habitat. Contact Inletkeeper for more information

TAKE ACTION!

· Act NOW to protect the Cook Inlet beluga whale from extinction. Click here by May 30, 2006, to send a letter to NMFS telling them to immediately list the Cook Inlet beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act so the whale’s critical habitat can be identified and protected.

· Write to your elected official

· Write a letter to the editor

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· Forward this page to a friend

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· Join Inletkeeper!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & LINKS

National Marine Fisheries Service:

Cook Inlet Beluga Whale Overview

National Marine Mammal Laboratory: