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Courtesy Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies
Members of the whale disentanglement team work to save a right whale wrapped in fishing gear. |
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Whale rescue program faces funding cuts
Banner Daily Update Sun. Mar. 2
By Kaimi Rose Lum
BANNER STAFF
PROVINCETOWN — Funding for the renowned whale rescue program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies could be slashed by more than $350,000 this coming year – a shortfall that would force the center to dismantle its whale disentanglement team, PCCS executive director Rich Delaney said this week.
While in previous years the center has been assured of $450,000 in funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), all that has been guaranteed for its whale disentanglement program in the federal FY 2008 budget is $94,000.
“It essentially kills the program,” Delaney said.
Delaney recently returned from a four-day trip to Washington, D.C., where he met with administrators at NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and says he has spoken “with everybody in the northeast division of NMFS.”
“It’s somewhat settled right now,” he said of the cuts, “but there’s time for it to change if NOAA wants to revisit how they allocate their budget.”
If not, the center will have to consider dramatic scale-backs to the disentanglement program beginning Oct. 1.
The PCCS whale rescue program has been in existence for 25 years and is responsible for freeing 89 whales from life-threatening entanglements in fishing gear, five of those rescues involving critically endangered right whales who went on to have calves. Over the years members of the whale rescue team have not only developed top-flight skills in their field but have helped train an entire network of people up and down the East Coast to disentangle whales.
Delaney said the center will continue to appeal to NOAA’s Washington administrators.
The center in the meantime has received the support of Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy and Congressman Bill Delahunt, who on Feb. 28 wrote NOAA to express their “serious concern” about the budget cuts.
“Our federal government should be using every tool at its disposal to protect the remaining right whales, rather than making drastic cuts in a tremendously successful and valuable whale [disentanglement] program,” the letter stated.
For more on this see the March 6 Provincetown Banner
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Feb 28th, 2008