New Zealand Minister must use emergency powers to save Maui's dolphinsMarch 2012. Forest & Bird conservation organisation has urged NZ Primary Industries Minister David Carter to step in and use his emergency powers to halt the slide of Maui's dolphins towards extinction.
A Maui's dolphin was killed in a set net in January off the Taranaki coast, where the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had previously insisted the world's rarest dolphin did not occur.
"An unpublished Department of Conservation report estimates there are fewer than 80 Maui's dolphins remaining - which represents a 30 percent plunge in the population over the last six years," Forest & Bird Marine Conservation Advocate Katrina Subedar said.
"We have reached the stage where every death of a Maui's dolphin in a fishing set net threatens the future of the whole subspecies, so we believe the Minister has no choice but to introduce emergency measures immediately."
Under the Fisheries Act, the Primary Industries Minister has emergency powers that would allow him to temporarily extend the set net prohibition zone to include Taranaki while permanent protection measures are put in place. The current set net prohibition area - excluding Taranaki - was put in place along most of the upper half of the North Island's west coast in 2008 to protect Maui's dolphins from being killed in set nets.
Read on: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/mauis-2012.html
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