On Friday, the United States federal government declared the population of beluga whales in Alaska endangered, a measure that the state’s governor Sarah Palin has deemed as being premature.

The decision to list the beluga whales as endangered species has been prompted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) statement that belugas swimming off the coast of Anchorage (Alaska’s largest city) were at risk of extinction.

The NOAA has also determined that the mammals needed to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, an environmental law that was passed back in 1973.

Officials have revealed that the beluga whale population had gone down from 653 in 1994 to 278 in 2005, which raised concerns about the whales’ chances of survival.

The decrease in the number of belugas is an aftermath of excessive hunting in the Cook Inlet, the channel that flows from the city to the Gulf of Alaska, even though hunters in the region stopped killing the whales in 1999. The same year, several conservation groups filed a petition requesting that the beluga whales be listed as endangered species, but to no avail.

The decision to declare the mammals endangered was further put off this year at Sarah Palin’s administration’s advice, the latter urging the NOAA to perform an additional population survey during the summer, although the listing was expected to take place in April.

A number of industry groups in the Cook Inlet area have expressed their concerns that having declared the belugas endangered would have a negative impact on oil and gas development, cargo shipping, commercial fishing and construction projects, as well.