Amid the gloomy news from the conservation world comes a welcome nugget worth cheerign about. The humpback whale was a species hard hit by the whaling trade: some 1,400 animals made up the entire Pacific Ocean population in 1966. Forty-one years after a ban on hunting the species was instituted, scientists analyzing the results of an exhautive photographic survey report there are an estimated 20,000 Pacific humpbacks. Jay Barlow of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center said, "While I agree that conservation concerns are not eliminated, this is fundamentally a good-news story. If the world had more examples like this, I think that the people of the world would be more inclined to believe that conservation can make a difference."
COMMENT: Amen to that.
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