page_title: List of ecoregions in North America (CEC)
section_title: Bowhead whale
hierarchical_section_title: List of ecoregions in North America (CEC) / Arctic Cordillera / Overview / Endangered species / Bowhead whale
caption_attribution_description: English: Bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus), caught in an Inuit subsistence whale hunt in Igloolik, Nunavut in 2002.
context_page_description: This list of ecoregions of North America provides an overview of North American ecoregions designated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in its North American Environmental Atlas. It should not be confused with Wikipedia articles based on the classification system developed by the World Wildlife Fund, such as List of ecoregions and Lists of ecoregions by country.
  The commission was established in 1994 by the member states of Canada, Mexico, and the United States to address regional environmental concerns under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, the environmental side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Commission's 1997 report, Ecological Regions of North America, provides a framework that may be used by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academic researchers as a basis for risk analysis, resource management, and environmental study of the continent's ecosystems. Ecoregions may be identified by similarities in geology, physiography, vegetation, climate soils, land use, wildlife distributions, and hydrology.
  The classification system has four levels.
context_section_description: Another species that is of great importance to this ecoregion is the endangered Bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). Five total stocks of this species exist in the region within the arctic oceans and adjacent seas: the Spitsbergen stock, Baffin Bay/Davis Strait, stock and Hudson Bay/Foxe Basin Stock, Sea of Okhotsk Stock, and the Bering/Chukchi/Beaufort Stock. Historically, these whales have served as a cultural icon, and an important source of food and fuel to the Inuit people. At this point in time, their populations were estimated between 30,000 and 50,000 individuals.
  However, with the expansion of commercial whaling in the 16th and 17th century, this species was exploited to dangerously low numbers. Commercial hunting of bowheads was officially ended in 1921, when moratoria were established to protect the remaining 3,000 individuals left in the wild.
  Today, those same moratoria are still in effect, but the Bowhead population has been reinstated to a manageable population of between 7,000 and 10,000 individuals. Nonetheless, these whales have been (and remain) on the IUCN Red List since 1984. One of the most important conservation efforts for this species is "legal" protection by the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, which came into force in 1935. This convention was further strengthened and ratified by Canada in 1977 to support the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) recommendation for full protection of the bowhead whale. Further conservation efforts have involved more physically demanding solutions, including the recommended funding of specialized technical machines that have the capability to remove debris that commonly kills these whales due to entanglement and accidental indigestion.
caption: Bowhead whale
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