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WASHINGTON (AP) - The Commerce Department has classified a record number of
species as overfished, according to its third annual fishing report to Congress.
Meanwhile, the status of more than 670 other species is unknown. The report
found 98 species are overfished - up from 90 last year - and another five are
nearing that category. Since last year, 18 species were added to the overfished
category; 10 were removed. The department cautioned the net increase in
overfished species might reflect a new, more complicated definition of
overfishing, which considers both mortality rates for a species and stock size.
As required by the Sustainable Fisheries Act passed by Congress in 1996, a
fishery is now considered overfished if fish are being caught faster than the
stock can replenish itself, or if the stock size is too small to be fished at
current levels sustainably. See full
story
MEXICO CITY (AP) - More than 5 million monarch butterflies escaping cold
northern weather have arrived in Mexican sanctuaries and 180 million more are
expected to light for the winter, Mexico's environmental protection agency said.
The butterflies, which migrate each year from the U.S. and Canada, began
arriving Oct. 23, the government news agency Notimex reported. At least 180,000
people are expected to visit the sanctuaries in the central western state of
Michoacan to see the delicate orange-and-black-winged creatures during the next
four months. The monarch butterflies spend the winter months in the western
oyamel-fir forests of Mexico and Michoacan states. The migration is genetic, not
learned. See full
story
WASHINGTON (AP) - The House agreed Monday to urge an end to shark finning, the practice of cutting off shark fins and throwing the rest of the carcass back into the ocean. Finning has been banned in U.S. waters in the Atlantic Ocean since 1993. But the practice continues in the Pacific around Hawaii and U.S. territories because the fins are valuable as a delicacy in Asian soup. The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, a federal regulatory agency, recently agreed to limit the number of sharks killed to 50,000 a year because of complaints about finning. About 60,000 were killed last year by a fleet of 110 commercial ships. Environmentalists and federal lawmakers have criticized the practice as inhumane, wasteful and unsportsmanlike. See full story |
