Environmental economy: of the blue whales

Environmental Economy Case Study
The Blue whales are considered an endangered species in the marine populace. These creatures are considered highly nutritious, and that is why it had become popular food by the mid 19th century. The constant rise in human population, technology of hunting improvement led to reduced number of the whales. That means that Blue whale harvesters have endanger the extinction of these creatures which have a longer gestation period and slow reproduction rates. Research has already proven the reduction of the numbers of these creatures (Powell, 2008). A marine blogger, Patrick Moening in July 2008, noted that there was a 23% decline over the past year and a staggering 40% over the past couple of years. This shows a very negative trend regarding the future of the Blue Whales and the main cause of this is hunting leaving very few of them to breed hence the drastic reduction in their numbers (Ministry for primary industries, 2010).
Environmental concerns on these creatures have led the formulation of measures that aim to reduce the negative trend or stop it all together. The US tucked the animal status as endangered and passed a legislation that protects the Blue Whale from any further exploitation. They receive their protection from the Marine Mammal Protection Act enacted and started working in the year 1972 and the Endangered Species Act which was legislated in the year 1973 (http://www. dec. ny. gov/animals/9367. html). Countries like Australia and New Zealand have already adopted this legislation, and it is currently in use (Government of South Australia, 2013).
The policy enacted by the two governments meant that more of these Blue Whales would have an opportunity to breed hence minimizing the risk of extinction as well as sufficiently providing the much-needed nutrients to humans. As expected, the adoption of this legislation affected some people (Government of South Australia, 2013). Since the presentation of the whaling ban, studies have analyzed whether the protection dependent worldwide blue whale populace is expanding or staying stable. In the Antarctic, best gauges demonstrate an increment of 7. 32% for every year since the end of unlawful Soviet whaling, yet numbers stay at under 1. 1% of their unique levels. As indicated by a recent report, the Californian Blue Whale populace has bounced back to an expected 97% of its pre-hunting populace.
These policies can be attributed to the subsequent increase in the demand for Blue Whales and their prices. This is because the policy creates a situation whereby the quantity of Whales being fished out of the water becomes limited to a certain level. All of which is not good news for the consumers because they are in demand for more of these nutritious creatures as the human population grows. This automatically led to an increase in the price of a harvested Whale (Food timeline, 2012). The aggregate world populace was evaluated to be somewhere around 5, 000 and 12, 000 in 2002, albeit there are large amounts of instability in accessible assessments for some territories. Therefore, the economical implication caused by the policy can be termed as minimalistic if we compare it with the environmental implication. On a general perspective, the policy was effective reducing the risk of Blue Whale extinction hence helping in creating more sustainable environments. Whale hunters, the most affected parties by the legislation have welcomed the policy and ended up being conservationists.
References
Food timeline. (2012, SEP 4). Food timeline. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from Food timeline: http://www. foodtimeline. org/
Government of South Australia. (2013, Nov 1). Government of South Australia. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from Government of South Australia: http://pir. sa. gov. au/fishing/fishing_gear/permited_devices#toc9
Ministry for primary industries. (2010, August 3). Ministry for primary industries. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from Ministry for primary industries: http://www. fish. govt. nz/en-nz/recreational/most+popular+species/rock+Bluewhale/default. htm
Powell, M. (2008, July 11). Blogfish. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from Blogfish: http://blogfishx. blogspot. com/2008/07/are-bluewhale-going-extinct. html? m= 1