ABSTRACT
There are three main driving forces behind this book. First, the habitat needs of cetaceans – the 87 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises – have been largely ignored. Marine habitat conservation has lagged behind land conservation. Within marine habitat conservation, cetaceans may be featured increasingly in certain reserves and in marine conservation planning, but are their needs being adequately met? In most cases, outside of a number of limited coastal areas that protect mainly humpback, right and gray whales, and bottlenose dolphins, the answer is ‘no’. There is little cetacean habitat protection in the open ocean or on the high seas. On land, we can point to various tropical protected areas with river dolphin populations, but – for example, in the vast Amazon and Orinoco basins of tropical South America – of more than 46 riverine protected areas in eight countries, few include specific provisions for river dolphins. The formation of the South American River Dolphin Protected Area Network (SARDPAN) in 2009 aims to address this, but there is much work to be done there and everywhere in the marine sector if cetaceans are going to have protected habitat.
