Northern Fur Seal. St. Paul Island AK USA

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St. Paul Island is home to a huge number of northern fur seals. In fact, more than 50 percent of the entire population of northern fur seals breeds on the Pribilof Islands.

Once hunted to near extinction, the northern fur seal is still listed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act as “depleted” in the Pribilof Islands, but not considered depleted elsewhere.

The Russians harvested about 3 million fur seals during the period they controlled the Pribilof Islands, but the Russians were also the first to institute conservation measures to protect fur seal populations. Russia canceled the harvest entirely in 1807, and ruled females and pups could not be harvested from 1822 to 1827. By 1847, Russia established a breeding preserve where females could not be hunted.

When the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, commercial harvesting of fur seals resumed, taking about 2.25 million seals in the first 20 years. The pelts were so lucrative historians have estimated that profits from fur seals alone produced the equivalent of the $7.2 million purchase price for all of Alaska.

In 1985, hunting of northern fur seals was restricted to only Alaska Natives and only for the purposes of subsistence. The tribal governments of St. Paul Island and St. George Island have a formal role under an agreement with the National Marine Fisheries Service in management of the harvest.

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