Dave Sandersfeld

Oil Drilling to Hit Heart of Endangered Right Whale Habitat in Bering Sea
From: Center for Biological Diversity
Published April 9, 2008 10:04 AM

ANCHORAGE, AK — ANCHORAGE, Alaska— The Bush administration Tuesday took the first step toward opening up 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea to oil and gas leasing. The proposal, published in Tuesday’s Federal Register by the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service, would allow oil development in an area north of the Aleutian Islands near Bristol Bay that has been designated critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale.

The whale, once ranging from California to Alaska and across the North Pacific to Russia and Japan, was decimated by commercial whaling and is now the most endangered large whale in the world. Perhaps fewer than 50 individuals remain in a population that visits the Bering Sea each summer to feed.

“Drilling in Bristol Bay would be drilling through the heart of the most important habitat of the most endangered whale on the planet,” said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If the North Pacific right whale is to have any chance of survival, we must protect its critical habitat, not auction it off to oil companies.”

In July 2006, approximately 36,000 square miles of the Bering Sea were designated as critical habitat for the right whale under the Endangered Species Act. The designation came as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity. More than half of the area proposed today for leasing is within right whale critical habitat.

Ironically, the leasing proposal was made the very same day that a different federal agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, published a final rule in the Federal Register that reaffirms the designation of portions of the lease area as critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. Last month the Fisheries Service formally recognized the North Pacific right whale as a distinct species under the Endangered Species Act; previously the whale had been considered the same species as right whales in the North Atlantic. Today’s critical habitat designation protects the same areas in the Bering Sea as the 2006 designation, but transfers this protection to the newly recognized North Pacific right whale.

“Unfortunately, for the right whale it’s one step forward, two steps back,” said Cummings. “One branch of the federal government is acting to protect the critical habitat of the North Pacific right whale, while another branch is simultaneously proposing to destroy it.”

Today’s contradictory government pronouncements in the Federal Register are reminiscent of the Minerals Management Service’s recent decision to lease important polar bear habitat in the Chukchi Sea at the same time another federal agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was considering protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Both the Minerals Management Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are in the Department of the Interior under Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Kempthorne chose to delay protection for the polar bear until after the Chukchi lease sale was held. The polar bear listing has yet to be finalized and is in litigation.

Listing and critical habitat decisions for the right whale are under the jurisdiction of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is in the Department of Commerce rather than the Department of the Interior. The new listing and critical habitat designations for the North Pacific right whale were only issued following petitions and litigation by the Center for Biological Diversity, and would, if the administration complies with the Endangered Species Act, likely prevent the proposed lease sale from going forward.

More information on the North Pacific right whale is available on the Center for Biological Diversity’s Web site at:
/www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/North_Pacific_right_whale/index.html.

Contact Info:

Contact: Brendan Cummings,
(760) 366-2232×304

Website : Center for Biological Diversity