Species Reasoning

Conservationists were stunned.

What had doubtless seemed simple generosity to President Ford when he gave his Alaska timberwolf fur coat to an ad miring Leonid Brezhnev seemed to them defiling of an endangered species. Let ters and telegrams of protest greeted Ford on his return to Washington. It turned out that the Chief Executive was saved by the skin of his coat. While wolves in the Lower 48 states are on the endangered list, the 50,000 or so timber wolves that inhabit Alaska are not, so Ford emerged blameless on a technicality. The coat was the gift of an Alaska furrier named Jack Kim, who gave it to Ford on his stopover in Anchorage en route to Japan.

While Ford narrowly escaped charges of savaging one endangered species, staff members and American newsmen traveling with him had perhaps unwittingly made ill gains of another. They were given fish made of what the Soviets said was whalebone as mementos by the government of the U.S.S.R.

Whales, as every alert conservationist knows, are a clearly endangered species, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 prohibits bringing any part of a whale into the U.S. To inquiries about whether the President had personally brought back one of the whalebone souvenirs, a White House aide replied firmly: "I'm sure he did not."

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