The Arctic

Oil and Gas
In February, 2011, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it has abandoned plans to drill exploratory wells in the Alaska's Beaufort Sea in 2011, primarily because of ongoing delays in securing the necessary federal permits to drill. In 2010, numerous factors set the stage for progress on Arctic oceans protection: U.S. President Obama’s creation of a National Ocean Council and his Executive Order on marine spatial planning, the convening of a national commission to examine and apply lessons learned from the Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and several major court decisions which have put Arctic oil exploration – including in Bristol Bay, America’s “fish basket,” on hold temporarily. In Russia, federal officials began to fast-track a new law on oil spills. WWF supported and helped inform each of these initiatives.

Wildlife
Umky Patrol
The Umky Patrol, facilitated by WWF, is seeing significant results in Russia. The patrol helps minimize human-polar bear conflicts in Chukotka. Since being created in 2006, the patrol has improved lighting in villages so that school children can walk safely to school on dark winter days, informed villagers about polar bear behavior, monitored polar bear movements during the fall bear migration, worked to remove or manage attractants, and prevented bears from entering the communities using a variety of traditional and modern hazing techniques.

Seafood
Bycatch
Chinook salmon bycatch was a major agenda item for WWF at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in 2009. WWF and partners provided strong testimony in favor of setting a “hard cap” bycatch limit of 32,500 Chinook salmon. The council set the limit at 60,000. Later in 2009, when the Council turned attention to chum salmon bycatch in the Pollock fishery, WWF gave public testimony, advocating for a lower chum salmon bycatch limit to be considered as an option. The council agreed to a 353,000 upper bycatch cap (down from an initial proposal before the Council of 488,000 salmon). This lower option and others are being analyzed by council scientists.

Kamchatka Salmon Conservation Initiative
In 2006, WWF launched its Kamchatka Salmon Conservation Initiative to help protect five species of Pacific salmon and the spawning grounds for one quarter of all Pacific wild salmon.  In 2009, WWF worked with the Kamchatka Fisheries Ministry and one of the regional governments to develop a regional management council that would include a broad diversity of the public in salmon management. WWF has also started a summer internship program at Kamchatka State Technical University to train future fisheries managers and scientists.

Market Incentives
The first Russian fishery became Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified in 2009. In 2010, a Kamchatka-based company contacted WWF to announce its intention to become MSC-certified and ask for assistance in the process.

Enforcement
WWF continues to support an anti-poaching brigade in the South Kamchatka Sanctuary, home to Eurasia’s largest population of sockeye salmon. In 2009, rangers traveled over 2,300 km by foot, skis, and boat, writing up 44 citations, and confiscating four illegal fishing nets, 29 bear traps, and 63 snares. As a critical measure to combat illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, WWF in 2010 made significant progress in improving the satellite-based Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) currently in place in Russia. As a result, the Russian Federal Satellite Monitoring Center agreed to increase the number of commercial fishing boats equipped with VMS units in 2010 and to require electronic logbooks on all commercial fishing boats greater than 10 meters in length.