. The Canadian field-naturalist. St-Simon-sur-mer. Year round Summer only Winter only Spring, Sununer and Autumn Figure 2. Seasonal distribution of the Belugas of the St Lawrence. enforce. The creation of the Saguenay-St Lawrence Marine Park may provide a further level of control over a part of the summer habitat of the population, but also increases publicity for the area. At the provincial level, the Quebec Threatened and Vulnerable Species Act allows the Minister to designate species threatened or vulnerable and to act to protect them or their habitats. Population Size and Trends A Beluga f
. The Canadian field-naturalist. St-Simon-sur-mer. Year round Summer only Winter only Spring, Sununer and Autumn Figure 2. Seasonal distribution of the Belugas of the St Lawrence. enforce. The creation of the Saguenay-St Lawrence Marine Park may provide a further level of control over a part of the summer habitat of the population, but also increases publicity for the area. At the provincial level, the Quebec Threatened and Vulnerable Species Act allows the Minister to designate species threatened or vulnerable and to act to protect them or their habitats. Population Size and Trends A Beluga fishery flourished along the St Lawrence River between the late 1500s and the early 1950s, and was intense between 1860 and 1945. From records of traded oil and skins. Reeves and Mitchell (1984) estimated that about 15 000 Belugas were removed from the St Lawrence population between about 1880 and 1950; this may have been an overestimate as commercial records often did not distinguish between products obtained from Belugas and those from other species (Reeves and Mitchell 1984). Such a harvest could have depleted a popula- tion numbering even several thousand in the 1880s to a few hundreds by the middle of the twentieth century (Reeves and Mitchell 1984). Hunting proba- bly continued throughout the 1970s, and it has been suggested that approximately 25 whales per year were then still being removed (Pippard and Malcolm 1978). Studies from 1973 to 1996 have produced popula- tion or index estimates ranging from 300 to 705 (Table 1; Figure 3). Most have been aerial surveys, either visual (uncorrected for diving animals) or pho- tographic (with a minimum diving correction) but boat surveys have also been tried. Sample surveys of the distribution area (Sergeant and Hoek 1988; Kingsley and Hammill 1991; Kingsley 1993, 1996), as well as complete-coverage surveys of the most highly frequented areas (Pippard and Malcolm 1978; Beland et al. 1987b) have been carried out. While all are bona
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