Mexico shrinks protected area as world’s rarest porpoise battles extinction

MEXICO CITY, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Mexico's president said on Thursday a drastic reduction in the protected area for the near-extinct vaquita marina, the world's smallest porpoise, will help fishing communities, although critics fear the move threatens the species' survival.

Mexico's government this week reduced the area where fishermen cannot use gillnets – long walls of nylon mesh – by 86% to 1,562 square kilometers (603 square miles), about the size of Greater London. The prior agreement had protected an area similar to the size of the US state of Connecticut.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said the new scope aimed to protect biodiversity in the Gulf of California while also allowing fishermen to make a better living. Authorities said the measure took into account proposals by the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, a government advisory body.

Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a Mexican marine biologist and leading vaquita expert who took part in the committee, said he hoped a smaller area could concentrate efforts to save the mammal.

"It is difficult to enforce a ban over a very large area, which includes vast areas with no recent records of vaquitas," Rojas-Bracho told Reuters. "If you lose a ring you don't search your entire house, you focus on where you lost it."

Scientists estimated last year there were just 7 to 10 vaquitas left, including at least one calf. The population has collapsed from around 600 in 1997, largely due to illegal fishing targeting totoaba, whose swim bladders are highly prized in Chinese medicine and can fetch up to $10,000 in Asia.

Rojas-Bracho said that if no more vaquitas are killed, the remaining handful of porpoises would have a good chance of repopulating the species.

Conservation expert Gerardo Ceballos, a biologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, was less optimistic.

"What's happening to the vaquita is a death foretold," he said. "We've reduced the vaquita's protected area without actually having the technical or logistical capacity to enforce regulations there; we're giving in to pressure from interested groups so a larger area can be exploited."

Ceballos said a very minimal investment from Mexico's government would ensure the vaquita's protection. As things currently stood, however, he believed the porpoise was on the path to extinction.

"If the vaquita goes extinct it won't solve insecurity or poverty or any of the local problems. And Mexico would lose an icon," he said. "If actions are taken, there is a possibility, a hope. And we must keep working with hope."

(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez and Sarah Morland in Mexico City; Editing by Stephen Coates)