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In 1997, the Eskimo Walrus Commission (EWC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) established a formal cooperative agreement for the conservation and management of Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens). This arrangement facilitates the transfer of funds from Section 119 of the Marine...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jessica I. Cardinal
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2005
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.559.4078
http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/4255/Cardinal_ocr.pdf;jsessionid=237B6A2E95CBC5658F2824E3BEE6B19F?sequence=1
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Summary:In 1997, the Eskimo Walrus Commission (EWC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) established a formal cooperative agreement for the conservation and management of Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens). This arrangement facilitates the transfer of funds from Section 119 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act via the USFWS to the EWC to establish working groups and a few on-the-ground initiatives. The King Island Native Community of Nome, Alaska is one of many traditional walrus hunting societies represented by the EWC. King Island hunters provide strong evidence, through long standing observations and interactions with their environment, that climate change is affecting walrus and the walrus subsistence hunt. In order to effectively address the potential consequences of climate change on the Pacific walrus, the EWC-USFWS cooperative agreement must evolve into a more flexible cooperative management arrangement. I suggest that adaptive co-management be the more flexible arrangement. Adaptive co-management is based on the equal sharing of power and responsibility between government and indigenous resource users in which a