Late last week, President Trump and his administration agreed to protect a humpback whale habitat in the Pacific Ocean. The agreement was announced after American Indian and conservation groups sued the government for leaving the whales vulnerable to “ship strikes, oil spills and entanglements in fishing gear.” The groups that filed the suit in federal court included the “Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, a nonprofit that represents American Indian tribes.”
Late last week, President Trump and his administration agreed to protect a humpback whale habitat in the Pacific Ocean. The agreement was announced after American Indian and conservation groups sued the government for leaving the whales vulnerable to “ship strikes, oil spills and entanglements in fishing gear.” The groups that filed the suit in federal court included the “Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, a nonprofit that represents American Indian tribes.”
As part of the agreement, the National Marine Fisheries Service will “designate critical habitat for the animals by mid-2019 and finalize those boundaries a year later.” According to the agreement, this move will help protect the migration paths of at least three different “endangered or threatened populations of humpbacks on the West Coast.”
The lawsuit itself was filed earlier this year in March and accused the Trump administration of “seeking to expand offshore oil and gas drilling instead of protecting whales in California, where they have been seen recently near Fort Point in San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge,” according to the suit.
In response to the agreement, Todd Steiner, Turtle Island Restoration Network’s executive director said, “Once again, when we challenged the Trump administration’s attempt to illegally ignore the environmental law in court, the Trump administration has been forced to change course.” Alicia Cordero of the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation also chimed in, saying “critical habitat is essential for our humpback whale relatives…who have shared the Santa Barbara Channel with the tribe for thousands of years.”
In filing the lawsuit, the groups raised awareness of the perils humpback whales often face along the west coast. According to a recent study, the whales “often get tangled in fishing gear around Monterey Bay, where the migrating whales come to feed.” The same study also claims that “vessel collisions have become a major cause of death outside the Golden Gate, where 7,300 large vessels pass every year.” It’s estimated that 22 humpback whales are “killed by ships off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington each year.”
Despite the fact that the NOAA’s fisheries service recently “delisted nine of the 14 subspecies of humpbacks that were put under the Endangered Species Act in 1973,” the plaintiffs in the suit argued that the “humpback subspecies seen along the California coast were still suffering compared to their cohorts in the rest of the world.” For example, the Central American humpback whale population, “which migrates twice annually along the California coast past San Francisco, remained on the endangered list after only 411 animals were counted.” The Mexico humpback whale population, “which feeds off the West Coast and Alaska,” was bumped from endangered to threatened, though it’s estimated that many of those whales die from “entanglements in commercial fishing gear.”
For now, the plaintiffs are celebrating their latest win, though admit there is still a lot of work ahead to ensure the whale’s continued safety.
Sources:
Trump administration settles lawsuit, agrees to protect humpback whale habitat
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