26 July 2024: New study “Application of the Precautionary Approach to the Management of Marine Mammals in Northern Canada”

A new peer-reviewed note by Mike O. Hammill and colleagues, entitled “Application of the Precautionary Approach to the Management of Marine Mammals in Northern Canada”, published in Volume 13 of the NAMMCO Scientific Publications series – Marine Mammals in the North Atlantic (II), presents strategies for managing marine mammals in the Canadian Arctic. The authors provide guidelines that align the principles of conservation, sustainability, and respect to Indigenous hunting rights under Canada’s land claim agreements with the Inuit. According to the authors, the status of marine mammal populations can be assessed within this framework, using the Precautionary Approach no matter the amount of available information on population dynamics (i.e., why and how much the population size and structure changes over time). Hammill and colleagues argue that management procedures can be developed for both data-rich (sufficient information for complex models) and data-poor (insufficient information for models) populations. By using this guideline, the authors also encourage direct input from Indigenous Knowledge holders, as well as Western Science.

You can read the full article by Hammill et al. (2024) here.

Read more about NAMMCO’s principles for integrating a Precautionary Approach in NAMMCO’s management of marine mammals here.