Today, swimming in the oceans, you will find: 25,000 gray whales, more than before commercial whaling began; one million minke whales; close to a million pilot whales and beluga whales; and well over one million sperm whales. Of the 75 species of cetaceans, only 5 are endangered. The North Atlantic right whale, of which there are less than 1,000, are the most threatened. Other endagered whale species are the blue (10,000 to 14,000), the humpback (10,000 to 15,000), and the bowhead (8,000 12,000).

You can read the real story about whales — rather than another tale of eco-dishonesty — in Eugene Lapointe's important new book, Embracing The World’s Resources: A Global Conservation Vision (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Editions du Scribe, 2003, $27). This book should be required reading for every student studying conservation and ecology, and every decision-maker trying to fashion sustainable resource-use policy.

Eugene Lapointe has unique credentials to write a book on sustainability. He is the current president of IWMC World Conservation Trust, a global coalition of experts and wildlife managers promoting sustainable resource use guided by science. An attorney who grew up in the woods of Quebec, Lapointe served fourteen years in the Canadian government before becoming the Secretary General of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, from 1982 to 1990. CITES is the international trade commission overseeing the multi-billion-dollar-a-year commerce in wild animals and their products.

Lapointe left his post at CITES dramatically on November 2, 1990, when he was dismissed by UNEP executive director Mostapha Tolba. The campaign to remove him was led by a handful of U.S. officials and 28 major NGOs, who, according to Lapointe, “claimed I had become the worst criminal on the planet.” His crime was advocating a sustainable-use philosophy that allowed for scientifically directed hunting of whales, elephants, and other animals, especially in situations that respect local cultural values.

Thirty months later, a Panel of Judges at the United Nations described Lapointe’s dismissal as “capricious and arbitrary,” resulting from “the worst case of character assassination in the history of the United Nations.” In a unanimous decision, the judges vindicated Lapointe, awarded him financial compensation, ordered his reinstatement, and forced the U.N. secretary general to write a letter stating that Lapointe "had fulfilled his duties and responsibilities in every way and in a highly satisfactory manner.”

In 167 passionate pages, Lapointe lays out his pragmatic philosophy of sustainable use, and he also presents considerable data on the actual state of many wild animals — data that seldom appear in the media. His defense clearly shows why poverty is the biggest force working against conservation. Then he describes the attack on him and the organizations that did it.

Lapointe takes after the extremist NGOs, whose real green quest is the pursuit of the greenback. He explains why his pragmatic approach to conservation runs into conflict with green fundamentalists. His method does not generate the crises necessary for their fundraising. It soon becomes clear that this is why Lapointe got the hatchet.

Based on decades of watching environmental and animal rights groups squeeze their way into CITES, Lapointe distills their common approach to fundraising:

According to Lapointe, eco/animal-rights NGOs, such as the Species Survival Network, a coalition of over 60 NGOs who claim to be “committed to the promotion, enhancement, and strict enforcement of [CITES],” perpetuate many misconceptions about animals and may actually be a threat to whales and endangered species.

Lapointe’s book harpoons myths. What is the biggest threat to blue and right whales? Lapointe suggests it may not be whalers, but an overabundance of minke whales that compete with blue and right whales for the same food, as well as killer whales, which ruthlessly prey in packs, or pods, on young leviathans.

Lapointe also points out that tooted and baleen whales consume three-to-six times the combined 90-million ton annual seafood catch of all the world’s commercial fisheries. How often have you ever heard the media suggest that an overabundance of some species of whales is a contributing factor to the decline of some stocks of fisheries? Lapointe argues that controlled whaling, for meat, could help restore ailing fisheries.

This book will destroy false media images of the financially well-heeled and so-called environmental groups, as well as the governments who support them. For example, Lapointe says that “Greenpeace is a typical example of a multi-million dollar business concern that is entirely non-productive. It creates no wealth for society, but instead plays upon the gullibility of well-meaning individuals, insidiously undermining the technological basis that create wealth in the first place.” Lapointe is on point.

The X-Files promoted the idea that “The truth is out there.” One of the places you can find it is in Embracing the Earth’s Wild Resources. Read this book and you will learn more about ecology and resource management than you will by reading the endless stream of urgent appeals and tabloid newsletters written by the green fundamentalists who drove Eugene Lapointe out of his leadership post at CITES.

— James Swan is a contributing editor of ESPNOutdoors.com. He also writes for the Outdoor Channel’s Engel’s Outdoor Experience, which just won a Golden Moose for the category “Best Waterfowl Shows 2002.”

San Francisco -- From far and wide they came to San Francisco on Friday, in a quest for Amelia the chicken.

They came from Concord. They came from Portola Valley and Santa Rosa. They came with chicken boxes, chicken cages and chicken feed. They came with resumes, biographies and color glossy photographs.

Fifty people showed up in the lobby of the animal shelter on 15th Street, seeking to adopt the most famous chicken in San Francisco history.

Amelia is the brown-and-white bird rescued last Saturday after being harnessed to 100 helium balloons by an anonymous prankster and floated over San Francisco, apparently in imitation of a TV commercial stunt.

"This chicken exemplifies what we're looking for," said Gene Harris, who was seeking the bird as a pet for students at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. "We want our kids to persevere. This chicken can bring out those traits and teach sensitivity."

Kathy Feldman of Portola Valley brought photographs of her backyard chicken "spa" to support her application. She said her two chickens, Suzie and Ginger, had the run of a converted child's playhouse, complete with wallpaper, tiled floor, curtains and an electric clock.

"Amelia's had a tough ordeal," Feldman said. "Now it's time for her to come to Portola Valley and take it easy."

Although applications were to be taken at noon, chicken fans began lining up an hour early. Before long, the lobby was jammed with 22 official applicants, many accompanied by children and spouses. Never in the history of the shelter, said a clerk, had the building been so stuffed.

All clamored for Amelia, who was in seclusion in her cage on the second floor, where she had settled down sufficiently from her weekend ordeal to resume laying eggs. A shelter worker brought down a brown one, and its appearance drew a cheer from Amelia's suitors and swains.

Meanwhile, shelter manager Kat Brown sat in her office behind a locked door and waded through the applications. She gazed at photographs and drawings of palatial chicken coops, she sifted through testimonials from children in educational chicken programs, and she read the solemn testimony of prospective owners who pledged never to do anything so crass to Amelia as place her in a stockpot.

A San Francisco man said he needed Amelia as a companion for his current chicken, a bird that had just completed 31 performances in a play about chickens. A Concord boy brought along a videotape of his chicken coop. A Mission District preschool teacher brought 100 photographs of her students cuddling with the school's two chickens, Fluffy and Lady Brahma.

While Brown pondered, the applicants paced.

"I just have to have that chicken," muttered one.

Half an hour later, Brown emerged to announce that all 22 applicants were fully qualified and that a lottery would have to be held. The names of all 22 chicken lovers were written on scraps of paper and placed in a pitcher, and three names were drawn for a final series of interviews.

One by one, the three were summoned to Brown's office for more questioning, in the manner of a Ph.D. oral exam.

Why do you seek the chicken? What experience do you have with chickens? Do you desire Amelia only because she's a famous chicken? Do you understand the nature of the chicken commitment?

It came down to a choice between Irina Stegner of Los Altos ("Animals teach me so much") and Peggy DiPrima of Concord ("My husband says I treat chickens better than I treat him").

At long last, Brown emerged with her decision.

"Peggy DiPrima is our first choice," she said, and DiPrima erupted with a noise louder than that of a Rhode Island Red when a raccoon comes calling.

She filled out paperwork, she paid her $10 chicken adoption fee, and she trooped upstairs and placed Amelia in a cardboard box. But she could not leave the shelter without taking Amelia out of the box into her arms and kissing her three times on the top of her head, while a dozen cameras captured every moment.

"Hello, sweetheart," she said. "Hello, beautiful. Let's go home."

In response to the ministrations, the nonplussed bird did what chickens often do, all over her new benefactress' blouse.

"That's all right, sweetheart," DiPrima said. "I have a towel in the car."

It turned out to be an eventful day for chickens. A Mill Valley animal rights group posted a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever sent Amelia aloft. And a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. representative returned to the Western Addition street corner where Amelia's flight ended last Saturday, in a tangle of high-tension power lines, to urge with utmost solemnity that the stunt never be repeated.

"We're worried that there could be more incidents," said PG&E spokesman Jason Alderman, holding the utility's first-ever chicken press conference. "We were happy to save the chicken, but we don't want to have to do it again."

Only one reporter showed up at the press conference, perhaps because President Bush was at that moment arriving at San Francisco International Airport.

"I understand," Alderman said. "I don't begrudge reporters for covering the president instead of a chicken."

E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.