"Why Deaths of 25 Walruses Prompted a Federal Probe"

"More than two dozen walruses were found shot dead on the Alaskan shoreline, ringing alarm bells for a species already increasingly threatened by climate change."

"Federal authorities are investigating the death of 25 Pacific walruses found along the Alaskan shoreline last week, casting the controversial practice of 'head-hunting' back into the spotlight.

'Head-hunting,' which refers to the hunting of walruses purely for their tusks, is prohibited in Alaska except only to the state’s indigenous population, as The Christian Science Monitor previously reported.

The two dozen animals discovered last week, twelve of them only pups, had been shot, according to some reports. And several had had their heads and tusks removed, suggesting that it could have been a case of poaching."

Michelle Toh reports for the Christian Science Monitor September 24, 2015.