Press Watch – Honolulu Star Bulletin, June 8, 2009
The Surfrider Foundation’s Kauai chapter is offering a reward — as yet unspecified — for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shooting death of two Hawaiian monk seals on Kauai.
The reward will come from donations to the organization, which so far total $8,000 in the aftermath of the deaths, officials said.
“The Surfrider Foundation was outraged that somebody would willfully kill these animals, who posed no real harm to people here on Kauai,” said Surfrider Foundation volunteer Carl Berg. “We felt there was a tremendous amount of disrespect for the ocean and the ocean creatures.” […]
Federal authorities are investigating the death of an endangered Hawaiian monk seal that witnesses said they believed was shot as it lounged on a beach on the North Shore of Kaua’i yesterday.
Easily exploited by hunters, whalers and fishermen in the 19th century, Hawaiian monk seals essentially never recovered. As early as 1976, the Hawaiian monk seal was listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The species is also on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Red List of Threatened Species, and trade in the species or its parts is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).