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GENEVA — The humpback whale, nearly hunted into history four decades ago, is on the “road to recovery” and is no longer considered at high risk of extinction, an environmental group said today. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the producer each year of a Red List of threatened species, also upgraded the status of the southern “right” whale from vulnerable.
Bill Perrin, an expert with the IUCN, said the humpback- whale population had dropped to the “low thousands” when it was banned from commercial hunts in 1966. Its numbers have since risen to at least 60,000. Perrin said the population is growing at a healthy rate of 5 percent each year in the North Pacific.
