Import Ban Sought on 2 Endangered Species

A wildlife protection group demanded that the Bush Administration act immediately to protect two endangered marine species in the Gulf of California, saying a Mexican government crackdown has been inadequate.

In a formal petition filed with federal wildlife and commerce officials, the Washington-based Defenders of Wildlife group Thursday proposed banning the importation of certain Mexican fish in filet form in order to protect the totoaba fish and the world’s most endangered porpoise, the elusive vaquita.

Totoaba fishermen in the states of Baja California and Sonora have decimated the vaquita population over the years by accidentally snaring the porpoises in gill nets. Although obscured by the debate over other dolphins killed by Mexican tuna nets, the plight of the vaquita , or “little cow, “ is dire.

Experts believe only a few hundred vaquita remain in existence; the small, shy mammals are so rarely seen alive that fishermen call them phantoms.

Their slaughter has been fed by tourist demand for totoaba in northern gulf fishing villages. U.S. business people and tourists smuggle totoaba north across the border in the form of filets, passing them off as sea bass or other legal species, activists say.

A crackdown ordered by Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has resulted in tougher enforcement of a totoaba fishing ban that had been ignored until now, with arrests of two fishermen last month and stepped-up patrols by wildlife inspectors and the Mexican Navy.

But Defenders of Wildlife said an undercover team of investigators sent to the Gulf of California in April found that the fish are still being widely killed, sold and consumed.

The Mexican enforcement program is “a face-saving effort, it doesn’t seem to have any teeth,” said Defenders of Wildlife spokesman Christopher Croft, a former U.S. Marine Fisheries Service inspector, in a telephone interview from Washington. “Our Administration calls this a foreign problem, but it’s U.S. demand and dollars that are fueling the fish market.”

Mexican officials disagreed. They said their efforts have had a dramatic impact on totoaba fishing during the peak season, which runs from February through May.

“We have a program of very rigorous inspection, and we have reinforced it,” said Moises Zazueta Gastelum, delegate of the Mexican Secretariat of Fisheries in the state of Sonora. In the United States, meanwhile, federal wildlife officials said they will have to study the Defenders of Wildlife petition, which requires a response within several months and could lead to a court fight if rejected.