Newsflash
June 30, 2008 – Lawsuit Filed to Protect Endangered Whales: Alaska's Cook Inlet Beluga Whale Protections Illegally Delayed
Like the legendary Moby Dick, the full-grown beluga whale is snowy white. Yet unlike Herman Melville’s mostly fictitious albino sperm whale, which had only Captain Ahab to deal with, the beluga swims in an ocean chock-full of dangers such as pollution, oil drilling, and global warming. The isolated Cook Inlet beluga whale population must also contend with the increasingly perilous and industrialized waters near Anchorage.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Proposed as endangered in 2007
PETITIONED: 1999, 2006
RANGE: Five distinct beluga populations are recognized in Alaska, including the Cook Inlet population, which doesn’t migrate and is separated from the other four by the Alaska Peninsula
THREATS: Industrial development, pollution, sewage discharge, oil and gas development, gillnets, ship traffic, sonar devices, global warming, and underwater seismic blasting
POPULATION TREND: Fewer than 400 beluga whales likely remain in Cook Inlet today.
|
SAVING THE COOK INLET BELUGA WHALE
The occasional stray beluga has wandered as far south as New Jersey in the Atlantic Ocean and Washington state in the Pacific. But in the United States, belugas are generally confined to Alaska, where some of the most important beluga habitat at Cook Inlet lies adjacent to the state’s fastest-growing city.
In 1999, the Center — along with seven allies — submitted the first petition to protect the species under the Endangered Species Act. In response, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared the population “depleted” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, an inadequate substitute for the more powerful Endangered Species Act.
Thankfully, in response to a 2006 citizen petition by the Center and our partners, the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed in 2007 to list the Cook Inlet beluga whale as an endangered species. The agency has received more than 150,000 public comments in support of endangered status for the whale, and it must now finalize the listing and identify critical habitat for the beluga by April 2008. But after a decade-long effort by the Center to obtain Endangered Species Act protection for these magnificent, highly imperiled whales, the Fisheries Service is still delaying their listing — so the Center is still working to ensure that they receive all the protection they need to survive and recover.
ACTION TIMELINE
+ CAMPAIGN LINKS
NATURAL HISTORY
+ MEDIA
+ DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS
+ FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
Contact: Brendan Cummings
|
MartinTiller.jpg)