MEXICO, (August 06, 2021).- American Academy Award-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio launched a very strong tweet against the government of Mexico headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), whom he points out as putting the vaquita marina in imminent danger of extinction.
In his verified account, DiCaprio condemned the Mexican government for not maintaining the fishing-free zone around the last surviving vaquitas in our country.
Last month, the AMLO government replaced the “zero tolerance” fishing free zone in the Upper Gulf of California with a “table” of sanctions in case of repeated sightings of more than 60 boats in the area.
In an interview with Mongabay Latam, the biologist Alejandro Olivera explained that what the table of sanctions does is “assess” the government’s response depending on how many vessels enter the area of the vaquita marina.
That is, if up to 20 vessels are detected , only 60% of the available force and resources will be used to deter them; and the totality would be used in case of finding up to 65 ships.
However, activists point out that Mexico has not even been able to implement the previous restrictions that prohibited vessels, so the implementation of the sanctions will be irrelevant, and therefore, a death sentence for the species.
Leonardo DiCaprio published on his Twitter account about the critical situation of the species, of which only 10 specimens remain:
The Vaquita porpoise is the most endangered marine mammal in the world. Yet, the Mexican government has lifted the ban on fishing in its habitat, effectively ensuring that the remaining 10 or so porpoises will die in gillnets: https://t.co/YIuN4Qay0l
— Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio) August 5, 2021
To justify his tweet, the actor and environmentalist shared a note in which the government of Mexico is accused of allowing fishing in the habitat of the vaquitas marina, an area that since 2017 was prohibited for their protection and that DiCaprio himself promoted at that time visiting the then President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Experts say that by removing the restriction, the vaquita is more threatened by being exposed to the fishing nets in which it is caught by mistake and dies by drowning.
Source: Sipse
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