by Gareth Hughes
‘Thank you’ to the hundreds of you who sent in an online submission to the Government urging greater protection for New Zealand sea lions, now there’s one more thing I hope you can do. Forrest and Bird are running an online petition calling for an urgent review of the management of NZ sea lions to halt the population decline.
A recent Department of Conservation report by Dr Louise Chilvers found at the current levels of by-catch the Auckland Island NZ sea lion population would be “functionally extinct by 2035.” That’s gone forever – in our life time! Another recent Otago University report identified squid fishing as the most likely cause of sea lion population decline on the Auckland Islands. Yet, in a major departure from past policy, the Government in their consultation document is proposing to remove entirely the sea lion by-catch limit for the squid fishery in this area!
These are amazing animals that deserve our protection not bad regulations that push them closer to extinction.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Mon, January 16th, 2012
Tags: fishing, forrest and bird, Sea lions, Squid
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
they used to rest on Lyall Bay – but that were many decades ago!
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Sea lion population should be increased
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