Final thought - B ricei is very likely to be the first large whale driven extinct by human activities. What did Dale Rice do to deserve that historical opprobrium?
(I never met him, have no idea what he was like as a person)

end/🧵

As for the name of the Gulf - that'd be a lovely touch wouldn't it? NOAA scientists would be obliged to call it the "Gulf of America whale" now. 😂

PS radical not radial in the last post. D'oh
5/🧵

That's what led to the "American whale" - but that was much too radial for everyone, even the NGO community.

See Joe Roman's piece in the NYT for mention of it. Shame it didn't get picked up.

4/🧵

Back when I was at NOAA, Scott Kraus & I tried to raise awareness of this whales' dire situation with a short piece in Nature

That was a failure, so it got me thinking on what could help
3/🧵

As we say in the paper -
"Given its distribution, dire conservation status, and desperate need for public awareness, we believe that “the Gulf of Mexico whale” is a more appropriate common name than “Rice’s whale,” as proposed by Rosel et al."

2/🧵

Thanks for responding

I see the choice is avoiding the eponym suggested by NOAA staff as valid for several reasons - see our paper on it (non-paywalled version linked)

Mostly it's a geographical descriptor. Australian humpback and snubfin dolphins for example
1/🧵

And for a bit more shameless self-promotion, here's the final of 3 pieces I wrote for general audiences, on issues with whaling

This piece includes an example of an Australian anti-whaling action that was stymied

hth
/end

In a different context, and a different era - how this sort of infiltration works. This example - also academic literature - is from tobacco control.

3/n

I had an academic paper on the program raised in the piece I linked to earlier
...
2/n

Not that much - I'd recommend starting with @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social 's book "Security and Conservation" and her publications on militarized conservation. That process gets used by security services
...
1/n

To add - the extent to which the US security services have infiltrated the wildlife conservation movement now remains unappreciated by most in conservation - academic and NGO. Control from within is easy with massive resources.

See this article for a brief introduction

For completeness, the next sentences is -
"What can be said is that, based on these data, there is no evidence of a decline of the magnitude reported several years ago (about 45% per year), at least within the study area."

"Hanging on" fits the data & what's reported

Well at least they didn't go straight to US SOCOM - there's a case of that happening with another NGO...

Interesting development
Sea Shepherd sure changed after Paul Watson got the boot didn’t it

Not sure my opinions are always very popular

Yes it’s possible to overdo the conservation optimism approach isn’t it

3 hops gets from me to the King of England