Throwing more weight behind a bill to stop the shark finning trade around the nation, the Humane Society of the United States, SeaWorld, and the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation have written to U.S. Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) to support \u201cimmediate action to halt the bloody shark fin trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sablan introduced the bill, or the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act of 2016 on June 23 and the groups wrote a June 29 letter to the lawmaker expressing their support of the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou and your cosponsors have been leaders in efforts to prevent wildlife poaching and trafficking,\u201d write Joel Manby, Seaworld chief executive officer; Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States; and founder Guy Harvey, in the two-page letter to Sablan. \u201cWe applaud your turning this hard-won expertise and influence to the shark trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
The groups say finning demands the cutting of fins, a small percentage of body weight, from living sharks and then discarding the fatally wounded animals to die.<\/p>\n
Upwards of 75 million sharks are killed every year, far outpacing many species\u2019 capacities to replenish, the groups said.<\/p>\n
As result, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red list of Threatened Species has estimated that a quarter of all shark species are threatened with extinction, the groups said, and studies have shown that hark population declines ripple out to affect the global marine ecosystems in \u201calarming and irreversible ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
The groups said they join Sablan\u2019s efforts and are also working to educate the public about the urgent need for shark and ocean conservation.<\/p>\n
The groups said the U.S. has already banned shark finning, in recognition of its brutality and waste, and Sablan\u2019s bill would take the \u201cresponsible next step\u201d to protect endangered wildlife and marine ecosystems by bringing federal law in line with trade and possession bands already adopted in eleven of the U.S. most large and diverse states, including Texas, California, and New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Throwing more weight behind a bill to stop the shark finning trade around the nation,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[12364,12365,57,12366],"class_list":["post-231606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-joel-manby","tag-threatened-species","tag-united-states","tag-wayne-pacelle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}