the shuttered<\/a> Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, as Canadian officials move closer to approving their transfer to the United States.<\/p>\nIn a post on X, Canadian Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson said she has conditionally approved a plan to export the remaining animals to the U.S. Thompson described her meeting with Marineland as \u201cconstructive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conditional approval could offer a path forward for the remaining whales and dolphins, whose future has been uncertain since the park closed. Final approval, however, will depend on additional requirements set by the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect that those conditions will require a thorough health assessment of each individual animal, because the minister can only give final approval if the transfer is in their best interests, said Camille Labchuck, executive director of Animal Justice, a Canadian-based animal law advocacy organization.<\/p>\n
Animal welfare advocates cautiously welcomed the announcement. Labchuck said her group continues to push for some of the whales to be relocated to a sanctuary under construction in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n
\u201cRealistically, this probably was the second option, the best of a bunch of bad options. And I think that there is a possibility for the late whales to live out their lives at the US aquariums,\u201d Labchuck said.<\/p>\n
Marineland is reportedly in talks with several U.S. aquariums, including the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut and the Georgia Aquarium. Representatives from those facilities say it is still too early to determine where the animals may be relocated or when.<\/p>\n
In a joint statement, the aquariums said, in part, \u201cour experts remain focused on using our recent observations of the whales to inform a potential rescue plan that is rooted in science and responds to the physical and social needs of the belugas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The export approval remains conditional. Canada\u2019s Department of Fisheries and Oceans says final permits will not be issued until additional information is provided by Marineland. Animal Justice says that information could include updated data on the current health of the animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadian officials conditionally approve plan that could move Marineland\u2019s remaining whales and dolphins to U.S. aquariums BUFFALO, N.Y.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-433855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}