Last month the chief judge for the US District Court for DC, Judge Lamberth, decided that Alaska's Cook Inlet beluga whales should remain endangered citing a spree of native subsistence hunting that nearly wiped them out between 1994 and 1998. He rejected the state of Alaska's bid to overturn the endangered listing by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Conservation organizations intervened in the suit on the federal government's side. More than a decade after the legislative moratorium on hunting the whales, the population has not shown any appreciable recovery.
Native hunters killed half of the remaining population of 650 whales in only four years, using modern technology. Thirty years ago the population exceeded 1300.
Cook Inlet belugas were listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2008. Then Governor Sarah Palin promised she would sue to remove the whales from protection but left office in mid-term to run for the presidency. Her replacement carried out the stated intent to block the endangered designation and the designation of 3,016 square miles of Cook Inlet as critical habitat for the whales
[map]. The Cook Inlet whales are genetically unique from other belugas and face a 70% chance of extinction in the next 300 years according to the most realistic population model. Beluga whales are also protected under the US Marine Mammal Act and are listed on the "Red List" of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. An Alaskan wildlife conservationist called the state's "war on wildlife" a loosing battle that is "wasting taxpayer money on frivolous [legal] challenges".
