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extinction crisis
Outrage as Biden Admin Refuses to Shield Right Whales From Lethal Vessel Strikes
"This is an extinction-level emergency," said one campaigner. "Every mother right whale and calf is critical to the survival of the species."
Jan 21, 2023
The Biden administration on Friday denied an emergency petition aimed at protecting critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from being struck and killed by ships in their calving grounds off the southeastern coast of the United States.
Conservation groups in November asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to establish a rule that mirrors the agency's yet-to-be-finalized proposal to set speed limits for vessels longer than 34 feet and expand the areas where speed limits apply.
As the petitioners—the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation—explained, such a regulation "would have helped prevent incidents like the 2021 boat collision that killed a right whale calf off Florida and likely fatally injured its mother."
The species' precipitous population decline has continued year after year. Scientists recently estimated that only 340 North Atlantic right whales remain, including just 70 reproductive females that give birth every three to 10 years.
"I'm outraged that the Biden administration won't shield these incredibly endangered whales from lethal ship strikes," said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "This is an extinction-level emergency. Every mother right whale and calf is critical to the survival of the species."
According to the petitioners, the federal agency responsible for stewarding the nation's marine resources said that it lacks the funds and staff necessary "to effectively implement the emergency regulations."
Officials from the fisheries service, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), claim that "they are working with vessel operators to get voluntary slow-downs," the petitioners added, "but voluntary efforts have not proved effective in the past."
"NOAA has dragged its feet on updating the vessel speed rule for over a decade... The agency's decision not to take emergency action to protect mothers and calves puts the species' entire future at risk."
Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Jane Davenport noted that "right whales have journeyed to the Southeast since time immemorial to birth and nurse their calves in the safety of warm, shallow waters."
"But the calving grounds have become killing grounds," said Davenport. "NOAA has dragged its feet on updating the vessel speed rule for over a decade; right whale mothers and calves have paid for this delay with their lives. The agency's decision not to take emergency action to protect mothers and calves puts the species' entire future at risk."
Existing regulations require ships longer than 64 feet to slow to 10 knots or less to safeguard right whales in certain areas at specific times. The fisheries service has acknowledged that bolstering its vessel speed rule is essential to prevent the species' extinction.
Vessel strikes are one of two leading threats to right whales' existence. The other key danger is entanglement in commercial fishing equipment.
Friday's rejection of stronger vessel speed limits comes just weeks after Congress enacted a policy rider that gives the fisheries service until 2028 to issue a new regulation requiring the lobster industry to reduce right whale entanglements. Conservationists condemned federal lawmakers' move to postpone action in spite of a court decision deeming the service's current rule unlawful, saying that the yearslong delay is almost certain to doom the species to extinction.
Entanglement in lobster fishing gear kills an estimated four right whales per year—six times higher than the rate considered biologically sustainable. Non-fatal entanglements can also result in illness and interfere with reproduction.
Monsell said Friday that Congress' betrayal last month makes "protecting right whales from vessel strikes... even more crucial."
Erica Fuller, senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, expressed disappointment that "the government declined to take immediate action to protect these mothers and newborn calves, and instead chose to continue longstanding bureaucratic practices with a species that can't afford a single death of another breeding female."
"The whole world is watching how NOAA plans to save this species," said Fuller.
As the petitioners explained:
Right whales begin giving birth to calves around mid-November, and the season lasts until mid-April. Their calving grounds are off the southeastern coast from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to below Cape Canaveral, Florida. Pregnant females and mothers with nursing calves are especially at risk of vessel strikes because they spend so much time near the water's surface. Scientists know of no other calving grounds for the right whale.
"The road to a declining right whale population has been paved by the agency delaying or reducing needed actions," said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation. "Denying our petition to take emergency action only increases the likelihood that even more drastic actions will be needed moving forward."
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Trump's Controversial Move: Gutting Endangered Species Act for Big Business
"This administration seems set on damaging fragile ecosystems by prioritizing industry interests over science."
Aug 12, 2019
Environmentalists denounced the Trump administration for crashing a "bulldozer" through the Endangered Species Act on Monday after the Interior Department finalized a series of rollbacks to the 46-year-old law that will further imperil hundreds of vulnerable animal and plant species while paving the way for business development projects.
"We are in the midst of an unprecedented extinction crisis, yet the Trump administration is steamrolling our most effective wildlife protection law," Rebecca Riley, legal director of the nature program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. "This administration seems set on damaging fragile ecosystems by prioritizing industry interests over science."
As the New York Timesreported, the Trump administration's rollbacks will "very likely clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live."
Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity's endangered species director, said the dramatic rule changes "could be the beginning of the end" for hundreds of species such as wolverines and monarch butterflies.
"We'll fight the Trump administration in court to block this rewrite, which only serves the oil industry and other polluters who see endangered species as pesky inconveniences," said Greenwald.
\u201cTrump finalizes disastrous rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act that will have profound effects on our nation\u2019s rarest animals and plants. Disgusting and disturbing. We\u2019re fighting back.\n\nRead: https://t.co/K7a4keVWZH\u201d— Center for Biological Diversity (@Center for Biological Diversity) 1565622533
The Washington Postsummarized the Trump administration's sweeping changes to the widely popular law:
Potential threats to business opportunities and other costs of listing a species [as endangered] must now be considered and shared with the public...
The administration will also shrink the number of habitats set aside for threatened wildlife. Currently, land that plants and animals occupy is set aside for their protection, in addition to areas that they once occupied but abandoned.
For the threatened species, unoccupied habitat might not be protected, opening it up for oil and gas exploration or other forms of development.
Conservationists and some politicians decried the changes as a major rollback of the 46-year-old law credited with saving the bald eagle, grizzly bear, humpback whale, American alligator, and Florida manatee from extinction.
The administration's rollbacks, which sparked a torrent of public opposition, come just months after a dire United Nations report warned that human activity has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction.
The Sierra Club said in a statement that the administration's far-reaching rule changes, which the group dubbed Trump's "extinction plan," will accelerate that alarming trend.
"Undermining this popular and successful law is a major step in the wrong direction as we face the increasing challenges of climate change and its effects on wildlife," said Lena Moffitt, director of Sierra Club's Our Wild America campaign. "The Endangered Species Act works; our communities--both natural and human--have reaped the benefits. This safety net must be preserved."
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On Brink of 'Sixth Great Extinction,' Humanity Must Conserve or Die
'We are sawing off the limb we are sitting on.'
Jun 22, 2015
It's official: the planet is entering a "sixth great extinction" that even the most conservative estimates show is killing off species at rates far higher than the previous five mass die-offs--and humanity is both at fault...and at risk.
A joint study by scientists from several North American universities published last week in Science found that the rate of extinction for species in the 20th century was up to 100 times higher than it would have been without impacts of human activity, such as climate change, deforestation, and pollution.
Moreover, if those rates are allowed to continue, "life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," said co-author Paul Ehrlich, the Bing professor of population studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead."
Scientists have long agreed that extinction rates have reached unparalleled levels since the last mass extinction, when the dinosaurs were killed off 65 million years ago, likely by a meteor crashing into Earth. For years, conservation groups have warned of increasing extinction risks faced by mammals, birds, and amphibians, which Harvard University ecologist Edward O. Wilson in 2010 called "the backbone of biodiversity."
But Friday's study shows "even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate."
The Stanford Report elaborated:
Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating "a global spasm of biodiversity loss." The answer: a definitive yes.
...As species disappear, so do crucial ecosystem services such as honeybees' crop pollination and wetlands' water purification. At the current rate of species loss, people will lose many biodiversity benefits within three generations, the study's authors write. "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on," Ehrlich said.
"We were very surprised to see how bad it is," Ceballos told the Guardian on Friday. "This is very depressing because we used the most conservative rates, and even then, they are much higher than the normal extinction rate, really indicating we are having a massive loss of the species."
"It's really signalling we've entered a sixth extinction and it's driven by man," Ceballos said.
Avoiding a "true" sixth mass extinction, the researchers concluded, "will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to alleviate pressures on their populations--notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change. All of these are related to human population size and growth, which increases consumption (especially among the rich), and economic inequity."
There is still time to take fast action to conserve species, ecosystems, and populations--but that window is rapidly closing, the researchers warned.
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