Last chance to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction?

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Last chance to save the vaquita porpoise from extinction?

Saturday, 07 November 2009 10:39

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This is a crucial time for the critically endangered vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus). Despite conservation efforts, the vaquita population has dropped more than 50 percent in the past three years as hundreds of porpoises have died in commercial fishing nets. Now just 150 vaquitas remain in their sole habitat, a portion of the Gulf of California off the coast of Mexico, and the species exists at the razor's edge of extinction. "Earlier programmes to alter fishing practices in the region have proven difficult to implement; last year, $1 million from the government that ostensibly paid regional fishermen not to fish instead went to buy new boats and motors."

But now the Mexican government has gone one step further, passing a resolution to ban trawling in a specific region known as the Vaquita Refuge.... Read Full Article by John Platt