U.S. Would Take Gray Whale Off Endangered List

Federal officials Monday proposed to remove the California gray whale from the endangered species list. It was the first time that a marine creature once near extinction was found to have recovered sufficiently to be “delisted.”

Calling the comeback of the gray whale, long familiar to tour boat sightseers off the California coast, “a major success,” John Knauss, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave much of the credit to the government of Mexico for protecting the Baja California bays and lagoons where female grays deliver their calves.

Before commercial whalers began hunting them in the 19th Century, Knauss said, there were believed to be 15,000 to 20,000 grays off North America. The population dropped to a low of about 2,000 at the turn of the century; it is now estimated at 21,000 and growing at a rate of about 3% a year.

“The fact that gray whales are being taken off the endangered species list does not mean that there will be taking of gray whales,” Knauss said at a press conference Monday. “They are still protected under the Marine Mammals Protection Act and by the International Whaling Commission. But I think it is important, particularly at a time when we are talking about putting more species on the endangered list, to announce our successes, and this has been a major success.”

Although some gray whales remain in Baja waters through the summer, most of them make their way north through the shallow waters of the Outer Continental Shelf to the Bering Sea and summer feeding grounds off Alaska.

Their travels and their increasing numbers in recent years have fostered a thriving whale-watching business along the West Coast.

Under the proposal announced Monday, a final decision will be delayed until after a 60-day period of receiving public comment. It was not immediately clear whether there would be serious opposition from environmentalists, but William W. Fox Jr., assistant administrator of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, acknowledged persistent concern about the condition of the whales’ habitat.

If the species were removed from the list, it would still be illegal to hunt or harass gray whales, but developers no longer would have to seek special permits for commercial activities, such as oil drilling, near the whales’ West Coast habitat.

The proposal to take the gray whale off the list followed applications from several organizations in the commercial fishing industry. One of the petitioners, the National Fisheries Institute, said it would set an “important precedent” demonstrating the effectiveness of species protection. Despite officials’ contention that the whale’s recovery is an important success story, some environmentalists received the news of the planned delisting with skepticism.

John Fitzgerald, counsel to Defenders of Wildlife, questioned the judgment behind devoting scarce resources and professional expertise to the process of delisting the California gray at a time when the Fisheries Service has a backlog of applications seeking protection for other species.

“Proposing to spend limited resources to formally remove protection for the gray whale is like throwing a lavish farewell party on the deck of Noah’s Ark,” he said. “Other species are vanishing even as they wait to be listed for protection. . . . NOAA is now facing petitions to list over 100 species of Pacific salmon, with half the native salmon already extinct and many of the candidate species nearly gone.

“Increasing numbers of gray whales is good news, and the Endangered Species Act helped make that possible. However, the agency should devote its resources to the most important task at hand rather than engaging in self-congratulatory exercises.”