Defenders' Experts
North Atlantic Right Whale: Management and Policy
Because ship strikes are one of the main threats to the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, Defenders of Wildlife is working to secure necessary speed restrictions and shipping lanes in right whale habitat.
The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Coast Guard are required under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act to designate such restrictions. Instead they have stalled and delayed while right whale's continued existence is threatened by deaths and injuries resulting from ship strikes.
Defenders twice has petitioned, in 2005 and again 2008, for emergency regulations requiring ships to slow down within right whale habitat. The Bush Administration denied these petitions despite failing to finish the rules the Administration and the scientific community have known since 2001 are necessary to protect the whale.
As a result of this continued, indefensible delay, Defenders has continued our work towards the implementation of meaningful regulations to protect this critically imperiled species in the courts.
Learn more about the right whale legal challenge.
|
|
