Good Call: Senate Sidelines Sportsmen's Act
An attempt to undermine longstanding wildlife, land conservation, and public health laws was defeated in November, when the Sportsmen’s Act of 2012 (S. 3525) was blocked from passage in the U.S. Senate.
Please see the below articles about Marine Wildlife from past editions of the AWI Quarterly.
Conservation and Commerce
The 16 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES CoP) is taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, from Sunday, March...
Marineland Ordered to Stop Dumping Dead Animals into Mass Graves
Marineland, a marine park in Niagara Falls, Canada, has been ordered by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to stop burying animals on its grounds. Former Marineland employees told The Toronto Star that the park—without...
Watamu Marine Association Aims for Cetacean Safeguards on Kenyan Coast
The Watamu Marine Association (WMA) was established in 2007 in Kenya in order to bring together members from the community, tourism, and environmental sectors in the coastal resort town of Watamu to promote community development...
Listening to Commerson's Dolphins
In recent years, there has been a considerable increase in the use of passive acoustic techniques to study cetaceans. One of the main advantages of listening over watching is that light in water attenuates within...
Capturing Wild Belugas: US Aquariums Swim Against the Tide
Almost two decades ago the US aquarium industry—facing mounting public distaste with the practice—ceased importing healthy wild-caught cetaceans for commercial display. Since then, people across the globe have come to realize that no aquarium can...
Death at SeaWorld
Semi-biographical, this book centers on the subject of keeping orcas in captivity for human entertainment. It is full of carefully researched facts and statistics, and meticulously details whale-human incidents and red flags that preceded the...
IWC64: AWI Cries Foul over Abuse of Subsistence Hunt Quotas
The 64th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), held in Panama City, Panama, represented a challenge for the Contracting Parties: to overcome the difficulties that led to the disruption of the IWC’s 63rd meeting...
Closing a Loophole by Mandating Escape Hatch for Turtles
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is proposing to end an exemption that has allowed some shrimp boats to avoid the use of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs)—apparently to...
Rio+20 Nets Little for Ocean Protection
“Concerning oceans, there is reason to suggest that the outcomes could be characterized as Rio+20 minus 40.” That was the assessment of National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle as she reported on the decided lack of...