Comments: Long harvested by some northern natives for meat, blubber, hides, etc.; put to many uses. In recent decades, annual harvest has been several thousand in Canada and Greenland, and a couple thousand (and increasing) in Alaska; in some areas, probably many are shot and lost. "Soviet" harvest lately has been between 1000 and 2000; used for food for humans, dogs, and fur-farm animals. See Reeves et al. (1992) for further details.