Steven's Save the Vaquita!
Steven Ware - Wild About Nature - is raising money for Whale And Dolphin Conservation
Story
The Vaquita is not only the world's smallest cetacean, but also the most endangered marine mammal. Only about 30 of them remain and their population is decreasing at an astonishing rate.
The Vaquita, which means "little cow" in Spanish, is perilously close to extinction. In response to this, the Mexican government has taken a number of steps to protect them since 2004. They established a Vaquita Refuge in the northern Gulf of California to protect the core range of the Vaquita, and initiated a plan of monetary compensation to fishermen who relied on this area to make their living. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto declared an emergency two-year ban on gillnets throughout the range of the vaquita, beginning in May 2015. This didn't work.... | "In the past three years, half of the vaquita population has been killed in fishing nets, many of them set illegally to capture an endangered fish. Fewer than 100 vaquitas remain and the species will soon be extinct unless drastic steps are taken immediately." |
The latest acoustic survey indicates that the decline in the Vaquita population is accelerating. The rapid fall of the population is a direct result of rampant illegal trade in an endangered fish species, the Totoaba, which is caught in gillnets that entangle Vaquitas. The Totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is a large fish that grows to over six feet long and weighs up to 300 pounds.
Why should you donate to an animal you will never see, that's thousands of miles away? Doesn't it seem right that we bear responsibility for something that we, humans, have caused. The alternative is to sit idly by and watch another beautiful creature disappear from the face of the earth.....forever. Can we live with that, we must at least try to reverse the damage.
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