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Enviromentalist killing Whales?

Steve

Well-known member
Have the eastern grey whales become too abundant for their own good?
"It could just be the whales ate them all, and what we're seeing is the same thing that happens to wolf and lynx populations when they eat too much of their prey.",...

One suggestion, from Dr Justin Cooke, who works with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) on cetacean issues, is that the greys have just become too plentiful.

"No whale population can expand indefinitely," he said, "and these whales seem to have exceeded their historical level so it would be surprising if they continued increasing -

"When whale numbers were lower there was enough to go round in poor years, but now numbers are higher and so there's only enough to go round in good years."

William Megill acknowledges that the population could have become unsustainably high.

There are thought to be between 15,000 and 18,000 grey whales in the eastern Pacific, a population that has been in generally good health since pulling back from the brink of extinction when hunting stopped in the 1940s.

Numbers may be higher now than before the hunting era.

My liberal source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6599805.stm
 

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