|
About | Contact | Mongabay on Facebook | Mongabay on Twitter | Subscribe |
|
|
Caspian seal numbers plummet 90% Morgan Erickson-Davis, mongabay.com November 12, 2008
A team from the University of Leeds performed a series of surveys in 2007 and 2008 which revealed that the birth rate has decreased from around 17,000 pups born per year to only between 6,000 and 7,000 - a drop of 60%. The team's census further showed that the current number of breeding females was only 17,000, a number barely large enough to maintain the genetic viability of the species.
Pollution, habitat degradation, disease, drowning in fishing nets, and commercial hunting have reduced the seal population from over one million at the turn of the 20th century to an estimated 100,000 today. In the Dagestan area of the Russian Federation alone, 8,000 seal pups have been killed in recent years, a number that eclipses the entire species' annual birth rate in an area that has less than seven percent of the Caspian coastline. The team is working on enacting conservation measures that prioritize hunting bans in all countries that border the Caspian Sea. "Without a suite of conservation measures there is a very high risk the species will become extinct, and possibly within our lifetime," says Dr Goodman. The team is also working on a project funded by the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs through the Darwin Initiative that will strengthen the involvement of local scientists in the management of the seals.
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest enclosed body of water, itself becoming landlocked around 5.5 million years ago due to continental drift.
Tags: marine mammals lakes mammals Fishing wildlife Morgan Erickson-Davis biodiversity endangered species animals conservation environment green News index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing
|
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 
Photos HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS / PRINTS 
CALENDARS 
CANVAS BAGS 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright mongabay 2010 Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect, an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region. Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant. |
