Washington state tribe's whale hunting request triggers new backlash

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Native American tribe's request to resume its sacred canoe and harpoon hunts of federally protected gray whales off the Washington state coast has drawn fresh opposition while the treaty-enshrined proposal is weighed by U.S. fisheries managers.

The application is at the heart of a decades-long quest by the Makah Tribe to hunt the marine mammals for both subsistence and religious purposes, which the tribe says it has done over millennia in the Pacific Ocean and Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Conservationists have criticized the practice as an unnecessary and barbaric death for animals that have high sentience and intelligence levels.

"The bottom line is that the Makah don't have a legitimate need to kill the whales," said D.J. Schubert, a biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute, a non-profit group.

The Makah Tribe is the only Native American tribe outside Alaska to hold whaling rights, enshrined in an 1855 U.S. treaty, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is evaluating the request.

The Makah tribe ceased the practice in the early 20th century as whale populations dropped. But after gray whales were de-listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1994, tribe members harvested one whale in 1999 with the U.S. government's approval.

In 2004, a U.S. appeals court ruled the Makah must seek a waiver from the Marine Mammal Protection Act to hunt whales, and that NOAA officials must analyze the environmental impact of the request.

The tribe sought a waiver a year later, asking to take as many as five gray whales annually from an estimated stock of 20,0000, NOAA said.

The tribe did not respond to requests for comment. It says on its website that "whaling and whales are central" to its culture, describing capturing an animal that can weigh 80,000 pounds (36 metric tonnes) using little more than a harpoon thrown from a canoe. NOAA says whalers use .50-caliber gun for the final kill.

In 2007, lacking government approval, Makah whalers killed a gray whale.

A NOAA study from March looked at range of options, including allowing the tribe to hunt up to five whales a year during limited seasons and under other restrictions.

The final analysis, which NOAA hopes to finish by year's end, will be evaluated during a hearing by an administrative law judge who will decide whether to grant the hunting request.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)

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