The humpback and some other big whales are recovering from the threat of extinction.

But will the celebrations turn sour, for many people, if whaling nations use the news to justify sharpening their harpoons?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature put out a report today showing that the humpback was off the main endangered list, along with some other species including the southern right whale and the minke whale — it said that stocks were recovering, helped by a 1986 moratorium on all hunts. Many other types of whale, porpoise and dolphin were still in trouble.

But is the report bad news in disguise for whales?

Greenland, for instance, lobbied in vain June to add 10 humpbacks — a whale famed for its spectacular leaps (see the picture above) — to its annual quota of other species caught in an aboriginal hunt. Anti-whaling nations voted “No” at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission, arguing stocks were too small.

Can anti-whalers make that same argument next year?

And Japan this year dropped a plan to hunt 50 humpback whales after international criticism. Will that criticism still be fair if Japan targets humpbacks (perhaps even the famed white whale ”Migaloo” off Australia) next year?  

Whaling nations, mainly Japan, Norway and Iceland, argue they should be allowed to hunt whales when there are enough in the seas. Norway targets about 1,000 minke whales a year, and says there are at least 100,000 in the north-east Atlantic.

So should there be hunts or a ban?

A scientist who claims the world record for spotting the most types of primates wants more challengers — via a new brand of eco-tourism that might stave off extinction for many apes, monkeys and lemurs.

Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) primate specialist group, reckons he has seen 350 out of 634 known species and sub-species of primate in the wild.

“There are another couple of people in the running but I think that’s the highest,” Mittermeier, born in 1949, told me of his list compiled over about four decades of work often in the world’s tropical forests.

He said that he was planning to launch a website with the lists of the top experts’ sightings.

“Then people can try to catch us,” he said.

Eco-tourism to remote jungles could be a way of easing deforestation and human hunting for primate meat, a delicacy in some countries. Almost half the world’s primate species are under threat of extinction because of human activity, according to a report by the IUCN on Tuesday.

Personal tallies of species work with birdwatchers, some of whom zealously record how many of the 10,000 or so species worldwide they have seen. The late American Phoebe Snetsinger is the record holder with more than 8,000; a tally of several thousand is enough to inspire awe (…at least among fellow enthusiasts).

A drawback for primate spotting is that birds are obviously easier to see — a glance out of my office here over a square in central Oslo reveals several pigeons, a gull swooping past and a couple of sparrows. There’s not a single chimpanzee, gibbon, orang-utan or gorilla (…though I wonder about that big guy in the heavy coat over in the corner).

So my species scorecard so far today — Birds: 3, Primates: 1 (he’s human).

Trips to remote tropical region to spot primates could be one way of putting a price tag on primates and their habitats: local people would have a stake in conservation if their income from tourism were higher than from hunting or logging.

Of course there would be a host of environmental problems in bringing more visitors to the jungles. But maybe they could do more good than harm?

So would you pay for a trip to a tropical forest in the Congo basin, or along the Amazon? Perhaps to the Ivory Coast to try to track down a Miss Waldron’s red colobus? — a type of monkey not seen by a primatologist since 1978.

What do you think? Please tell us your views.