"Marine Mammal Commission Workshop on Future Directions in Marine Mammal Research." “Determining Units to Conserve”

Two human generations ago, my great-grandparents paused in their westward move while herds of migrating buffalo crossed the Missouri River in front of their steamboat. Long before the birth of my father the migratory herds of the North American great plains were a distant memory and the plains ecosystems were forever changed. The marine world is different. Fencing or paving the sea is impossible. Nevertheless, the great migrating “herds” of whales were nearly extinguished in my lifetime. Humans now choose what they will conserve into the future. The question of how to define “units to conserve” is not a question of how to define a species, but rather how we define our vision of the future.