Endangered whale’s home proposed for oil development

Alaska Newspapers Inc.
editor@alaskanewspapers.com

April 08, 2008 at 9:07AM AKST

The Bush Administration today took the first step toward opening up 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea off Alaska to oil and gas leasing. The proposal, published in today’s Federal Register by the Department of 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, according to a written statement from the Center for Biological Diversity.

The North Pacific right 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, according to the statement.   “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, CBD oceans program director. “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. More than half of the area proposed today for leasing is within right whale critical habitat, according to the statement.

Ironically, the leasing proposal by the Minerals Management Service 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 critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale in the lease area.

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 of critical habitat, but transfers this habitat protection to the newly recognized North Pacific right whale.

Today’s 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 Interior under Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne.  Secretary 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.

 

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