Stevens Wants Marine Mammal Protection Act Clarified

STEVENS WANTS MARINE MAMMAL PROTECTION ACT CLARIFIED:

Will Work to Ensure that Harassment is Clearly Defined

Thank you Chairwoman Snowe for holding this hearing on the Marine Mammal Protection Act. I would like to recognize one of the witnesses on the second panel from the State of Alaska, Charles Johnson, Executive Director of the Alaska Nanuuq Commission, which was established in 1994 to represent hunters and villages in North and Northwest Alaska in the negotiation of the U.S./Russia Polar Bear Treaty.

The Polar Bear Treaty received a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month and it is my hope that the Senate can ratify this important management agreement before the August recess. Charles, thank you for traveling all the way from Nome, Alaska to be here today. Your testimony and perspectives on whether the Marine Mammal Protection Act is working effectively will be important for this Committee to fully understand.

When the Marine Mammal Protection Act became law in 1972 it followed a moratorium on the taking of marine mammals.
The Act was passed to protect certain marine mammals that are in danger of extinction or depletion; help restore the reproduction capability of mammals if they fall below their optimum sustainable level; and achieve a better understanding of the ecology and population dynamics of marine mammals.

However, like many of our marine resource laws, the threat of costly, time-consuming environmental litigation hangs over this Act like a black cloud. Marine mammals cannot properly be managed because researchers are not permitted to go near them. The permitting process is so arduous that scientists in Alaska are often times denied or are significantly delayed in acquiring permits needed to perform research to protect and manage the species.

NOAA needs to look closely at its process for issuing research permits to make sure that it properly considers the unique environments that exist in areas like Alaska. We have a small window of reasonable weather when research can be conducted.

The Administration's proposed bill adds a new section (119A) that allows the Departments of Commerce and the Interior to enter into harvest management agreements with Alaska Native tribes in order to conserve both depleted and non-depleted stocks of marine mammals. The provision would authorize Alaska Natives to design, implement and enforce management plans within the MMPA.

There is merit in allowing harvest management agreements to be developed for non-depleted stocks of marine mammals. However, the Alaska marine mammal commissions currently authorized in the Act are the best organizations to receive this authority, not the 227 tribes now recognized in Alaska. Had a pre-depletion co-management agreement been in effect in Cook Inlet, we could have likely avoided the dramatic decline that led to a depleted listing for that family of Beluga whales.

Alaska's Native commissions already have proven success in the co-management of marine mammals. The Nanuuq Commission's work on the polar bear, the Alaska Native Harbor Seal Commission, the Alaska Sea Otter and Steller Sea Lion Commission, the Eskimo Walrus Commission, the Alaska Beluga Committee, and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission all work well with their respective federal agencies on the management and study of marine mammals throughout Alaska. The co-management agreements under the MMPA should remain with the various Alaska marine mammal commissions.

This past December, the National Academies found that diminished food supply is not the cause of decline for Steller sea lions in Alaska. I asked the Academy to scrutinize this theory as part of the law Congress passed to secure better science on the causes for sea lion decline. I believed that better science and research would show that fishing was not the cause of this decline.

The National Academy of Sciences study noted the greatest threat to the weakened population of sea lions was likely from impacts such as killer whale attacks and the overall oceanic and climatic shift in the North Pacific. However, the good news is the National Marine Fisheries Service released results from an aerial survey that showed for the first time in two decades an overall increase of 5.5 percent in the Steller sea lion population from 2001-2002.

The focus and funding that was given to Steller sea lion research was critical to beginning to understand why this complex species is declining and what can be done to correct this trend. Harbor seals and sea otters are potentially the next marine mammals to experience weakened population trends similar to Steller sea lions. A recent Washington Post article reported that eleven killer whales consumed about half the harbor seals in Hood Canal in Puget Sound, roughly 700 seals, in eight weeks.

I hope the Steller sea lion crisis reminded us that predation of other creatures of the seas often has much more to do with a species decline than man's actions. Congress should address the Harbor seal issue in this Act before the environmental community attacks our fishermen with their next debilitating lawsuit.