Habitat Protection Sought for Endangered Hawaiian Monk Seal

SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 2, 2008 (ENS) - Three conservation groups filed a formal petition today asking the federal government to protect areas on the main Hawaiian islands as critical habitat for the endangered Hawaiian monk seal under the Endangered Species Act.

As monk seal populations plummet on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the main islands are playing an increasingly important role in the conservation of the species, the groups say.

The petition, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, and Ocean Conservancy, seeks to have beaches and surrounding waters on the main Hawaiian islands designated as critical habitat to better protect this unique monk seal.

Currently, the species has critical habitat designated only on the northwestern islands, a 1,400 mile-long chain of small islands and atolls northwest of the main islands that are protected as the country's only national marine monument.

Still, the monk seals in the northwestern islands are dying of starvation, emaciated and weak, scientists have found. Pups have only about a one-in-five chance of surviving to adulthood. Other threats include drowning in abandoned fishing gear, shark predation, and disease.

"Habitat in the main Hawaiian islands is essential to the survival of the monk seals," said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of the petition. "Critical habitat protection could be the best chance of recovery for these struggling seals."

Click here to read more

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

In Mediterranean, the Predator Is the Hunted

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 30, 2008; Page A05

The Mediterranean Sea, says Francesco Ferretti, is "a very dangerous place for a shark."

So dangerous that in the past two centuries, the shark population there has plummeted by more than 97 percent, both in relative numbers and collective weight, according to a study by the graduate student, two colleagues at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and an Italian researcher.

They based their conclusion on evidence scoured from an unusually wide variety of records, including documents drawn from universities and archives, from fish markets and recreational fishing clubs, and from local accounts of shark sightings.

The paper, co-authored with the late Dalhousie marine biologist Ransom A. Myers and others, is only the latest evidence that some of the oceans' most feared predators are themselves in dire danger.

Read the rest here.

The Big Pander to Big Oil

The New York Times

Editorial

Published: June 19, 2008

It was almost inevitable that a combination of $4-a-gallon gas, public anxiety and politicians eager to win votes or repair legacies would produce political pandering on an epic scale. So it has, the latest instance being President Bush’s decision to ask Congress to end the federal ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along much of America’s continental shelf.

This is worse than a dumb idea. It is cruelly misleading. It will make only a modest difference, at best, to prices at the pump, and even then the benefits will be years away. It greatly exaggerates America’s leverage over world oil prices. It is based on dubious statistics. It diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.

There is no doubt that a lot of people have been discomfited and genuinely hurt by $4-a-gallon gas. But their suffering will not be relieved by drilling in restricted areas off the coasts of New Jersey or Virginia or California. The Energy Information Administration says that even if both coasts were opened, prices would not begin to drop until 2030. The only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before their friends in power — Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney — exit the political stage.

The whole scheme is based on a series of fictions that range from the egregious to the merely annoying. Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, noted the worst of these on Wednesday: That a country that consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil supply but owns only 3 percent of its reserves can drill its way out of any problem — whether it be high prices at the pump or dependence on oil exported by unstable countries in Persian Gulf. This fiction has been resisted by Barack Obama but foolishly embraced by John McCain, who seemed to be making some sense on energy questions until he jumped aboard the lift-the-ban bandwagon on Tuesday.

A lesser fiction, perpetrated by the oil companies and, to some extent, by misleading government figures, is that huge deposits of oil and gas on federal land have been closed off and industry has had one hand tied behind its back by environmentalists, Democrats and the offshore protections in place for 25 years.

The numbers suggest otherwise. Of the 36 billion barrels of oil believed to lie on federal land, mainly in the Rocky Mountain West and Alaska, almost two-thirds are accessible or will be after various land-use and environmental reviews. And of the 89 billion barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie offshore, the federal Mineral Management Service says fourth-fifths is open to industry, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters.

Clearly, the oil companies are not starved for resources. Further, they do not seem to be doing nearly as much as they could with the land to which they’ve already laid claim. Separate studies by the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, show that roughly three-quarters of the 90 million-plus acres of federal land being leased by the oil companies onshore and off are not being used to produce energy. That is 68 million acres altogether, among them potentially highly productive leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

With that in mind, four influential House Democrats — Edward Markey, Nick Rahall, Rahm Emanuel and Maurice Hinchey — have introduced “use it or lose it” bills that would force the companies to begin exploiting the leases they have before getting any more. Companion bills have been introduced in the Senate, where suspicions also run high that industry’s main objective is to stockpile millions of additional acres of public land before the Bush administration leaves town.

This cannot be allowed to happen. The Congressional moratoriums on offshore drilling were put in place in 1981 and reaffirmed by subsequent Congresses to protect coastal economies that depend on clean water and clean coastlines. This was also the essential purpose of supplemental executive orders, the first of which was issued by Mr. Bush’s father in 1990 after the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill the year before.

Given the huge resources available to the energy industry, there is no reason to undo these protections now.

Read Full Article…

 

 

 

 

Seas Rising and Warming Faster Than Realized

Dot Earth
June 19^th, 2008
Andrew C. Revkin

On a very busy climate-oil-politics day I was able to just squeak in a short print piece last night on a new study in the journal Nature clarifying what’s happening with the oceans in a heating world (the heat held in by a building greenhouse blanket has largely accumulated in the oceans and physics demands that it will eventually add to atmospheric warming).

As you may be aware, those rejecting the enormous body of evidence pointing to a growing human influence on climate had embraced some transitory findings implying that the oceans were cooling. This new work may help resolve that particular line of debate. The formula holds: more CO2 = warming world = less ice + higher seas + lots of changing climate patterns.

The study, by Australian and American researchers, reviewed millions of measurements of ocean temperatures taken using a particular instrument on submarines and other vessels over four decades. The researchers found a subtle error that, when fixed, shows that the rate at which seas warmed and rose between 1961 and 2003 was about 50 percent greater than previous estimates.

Read More…

Leatherback Turtle in Texas - First Since 1930s

June 12, 2008, 12:42 am
By Andrew C. Revkin

UPDATED, 8:00 a.m.: For the first time since the 1930’s, federal biologists confirmed that a leatherback sea turtle has nested on a Texas beach, at the Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi.

Last Friday, staff conducting a beach patrol found turtle tracks and a few exposed eggs. They were thought at first to be those of a green turtle. But the eggs and the width of the tracks, more than six feet across, were later determined by a park biologist, Cynthia Rubio, to be from a leatherback. The giant, ancient, endangered turtles, some the size of a Smart Car, have until now only been known to nest in four spots in the United States – with about three dozen females a year laying eggs on beaches along the east coast of Florida and slightly larger nesting populations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. There is evidence of nesting in North Carolina as well.

An e-mail message circulating around the community of sea turtle conservationists came my way today and staff at Padre Island confirmed the details.

Wednesday also saw a champion in the “Great Turtle Race,” in which students and turtle fans tracked the meanderings of 11 radio-tagged leatherbacks in the Pacific Ocean. The first to reach the International Date Line was a turtle named Saphira II, sponsored by the Bullis Charter School of Los Altos, Calif.

Some Shark Populations Collapsing, Study Finds

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: June 12, 2008

Some shark populations in the Mediterranean Sea have completely collapsed, according to a new study, with numbers of five species declining by more than 96 percent over the last two centuries.

“This loss of top predators could hold serious implications for the entire marine ecosystem, greatly affecting food webs throughout this region,” said the lead author of the study, Francesco Ferretti, a doctoral student in marine biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

Particularly troubling, the researchers said, were patterns indicating a lack of mature females, which are essential if populations are to recover even with new conservation measures.

“Because sharks are long-lived and slow to mature, they need fully-grown females to keep their populations reproductively healthy,” said Heike Lotze, a study author who is also at Dalhousie.

The study is scheduled for publication in the journal Conservation Biology and was posted online on Wednesday at www.lenfestocean.org by the Lenfest Ocean Program, a private group in Washington that paid for the research.

The study focused on five species for which there were sufficient records to chart a long-term trend — hammerhead, blue and thresher sharks and two types of mackerel sharks. The Mediterranean is home to some 47 shark species, and similar declines are presumed to have occurred in many of them.

Sharks take years to reach sexual maturity and, unlike most other fishes, produce small numbers of young, making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. Populations have declined worldwide, but experts say the Mediterranean — bordered by many countries with diverse rules and fished intensively for centuries — has experienced bigger losses of sharks and other large predatory fish, including tuna.

The long-term decline in the region was revealed by sifting decades of catch records and other scattered sources of data, which showed that over time the Mediterranean ecosystem has been utterly transformed. With top-tier predators removed, the populations of other fish and invertebrates shift in unpredictable ways.

In November, the World Conservation Union warned that more than 40 percent of shark and ray species in the Mediterranean were threatened with extinction because of intense fishing pressure, including the continued use of drift nets. The nets kill many sharks and rays even when they are not the target of the fishing effort.

A ban on fishing in deep waters (more than about 3,200 feet) and on cutting off shark fins, a delicacy in China, could help, but much more enforcement of laws is needed, the conservation union said.

The Departed

Dot Earth

June 9, 2008, 11:21 pm
By Andrew C. Revkin

How much nature is enough? We may be finding out, species by species, as we whittle away in that slow-drip style. This is just a quick note of farewell to the Caribbean monk seal, not seen since 1952 and given its formal designation as extinct by federal fisheries officials last Friday.

Scientific drawing of the Caribbean monk seal. (Credit: U.S. National Musem)

The other recent departure of a marine mammal came on the other side of the world, in the Yangtze River, where the nearly half billion people in the watershed of that bustling thoroughfare made life impossible for a 20-million-year old dolphin species, known as the baiji.

The Yangtze River dolphin, or baji, is presumed extinct by marine mammal experts. (Credit: Baiji.org)

Robert L. Pitman, an American government biologist who spent years studying the baiji and then searching the emptied river, described the situation facing humanity in this pivotal era in Science Times in December 2006:

Globally, scientists have been warning for some time of an impending anthropogenic mass extinction worldwide. Previous bouts of human-caused extinctions were due mainly to directed take: humans hunting for food. What we are seeing now is probably the first large animal that has ever gone extinct merely as an indirect consequence of human activity: a victim of market forces and our collective lifestyle. Nobody eats baiji and no tourists pay to see it — there were no reasons to take it deliberately, but there was no economic reason to save it, either. It is gone because too many people got too efficient at catching fish in the river and it was incidental bycatch. And it is perhaps a view of the future for much of the rest of the world and an indication that the predicted mass extinction is arriving on schedule.

For the Chinese, I think that losing a half-blind river dolphin and a couple of oversize fish was a fair trade for all the money that is being made there now. China is an economic model envied by most of the rest of the world, and I think that many other (especially third world) countries will be confronted with similar decisions of economic development versus conservation of habitats and animals, and the response will be the same. From now on we will have to choose which animals will be allowed to live on the planet with us, and baiji got cut in the first round. It is a sad day. I know it is their country, but the planet belongs to all of us. We came to say goodbye to baiji, but after its being in the river for 20 million years, we apparently missed it by two years.

Sorry if I got a little emotional here, but the disappearance of an entire family of mammals is an inestimable loss for China and for the world. I think this is a big deal and possibly a turning point for the history of our planet. We are bulldozing the Garden of Eden, and the first large animal has fallen.

Robert L. Pitman, NOAA Fisheries Ecosysem Studies Program

Reyes Offers Own Version of Marine Monument

By Agnes E. Donato

Senate President Pete P. Reyes has introduced a bill calling for the preservation of natural resources in the Northern Islands.

Senate Bill 16-32, which creates a “Northern Islands Commonwealth Conservation Area,” is seen as a response to the marine monument proposal for the Marianas' northernmost islands.

In his bill, Reyes said it is necessary to reaffirm the constitutional protection of the northern islands because “recently people have called into question the Commonwealth's dedication to environmental stewardship.”

Pew Charitable Trusts, a not-for-profit organization, is lobbying for the designation of a Mariana Trench Marine National Monument around the islands of Uracas, Maug, and Asuncion.

The Fitial administration and the Legislature have publicly opposed the proposal, citing concerns about the CNMI's future ability to fish and utilize other resources available in the islands.

“We have been 'federalized' enough. We don't need any more people coming in and telling us how we should manage our natural resources,” said Reyes, alluding to the recent passage of a law allowing the federal government to seize control of the CNMI immigration.

Reyes said that his bill, which mainly codifies what's already in the Constitution, has the same intent as that of the Pew proposal: to protect the environment.

“Rather than giving up one-third of our land to the federal government's control, why not protect it ourselves? We can accomplish the same thing and maintain control at the same time,” he added.

Angelo Villagomez, a local coordinator of Pew Charitable Trusts, said he welcomes all conservation efforts in the community. But he pointed out that a national marine monument declaration could offer much more environmental protection than the local measure could.

“This bill is different from the Mariana Trench Marine Monument proposal in that it only pertains to the emergent lands. There is language in the bill about submerged lands, but that issue has already been resolved. This bill has the potential to work in conjunction with the Marine Monument proposal to protect both the land and the water,” Villagomez said.

He praised a provision in the bill that would create a conservation fund. But he said the language should be strengthened to keep the money in the fund from being used for non-conservation purposes.

Villagomez also urged the Senate to hold public hearings on the bill, as the Pew group has done since March, to allow for community input.

 

 

 

 

Bush Holds the Opportunity to Create the Largest Marine Reserves

In a surprising new development, George Bush and members of his administration have been given the opportunity to oversee one of the largest conservation programs in history.

If launched, the program could protect vast stretches of U.S. territorial waters from fishing, oil exploration and other forms of commercial development. The initiative could also create some of the largest marine reserves in the world — far larger than national parks like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon.

While the details of the possible initiative are still “under review,” the idea seems to be drawing strong supposrt from those who have typically been very critical of the Bush camp and its policies.

Conservationists say that White House Council on Environmental Quality officials invited a small number of ocean advocates to an unusual, closed-door meeting to discuss the idea last year. The CEQ asked them to help identify potential reserves in waters within the United States’ “exclusive economic zone,” which extends 200 nautical miles out from the mainland and U.S.-owned islands around the world.

The idea, says Jack Sobel, a senior scientist for the Ocean Conservancy, was to highlight areas where President Bush could create “marine monuments” under the Antiquities Act of 1906. It seem s that political conniving may have its uses, because this law gives the president broad powers to protect areas of “historic or scientific interest” without congressional approval.

The groups eventually developed a “wish list” that included about 30 potential marine monuments. They ranged from small reserves in U.S. coastal waters to vast swaths around U.S. territories in the Central Pacific. The candidates stretched “from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Dutch Harbor, Alaska” and beyond, says Jay Nelson of the Washington-based Pew Environment Group.

The final list, which has now been shortened to about 5 by the White House, has not yet been released to the public. However, some of the leading nominees have been identified.

The biggest proposal is the protection of more than 600,000 square miles around a number of small, mostly uninhabited islands in the Central Pacific. The islands — including Palmyra, Howland and Baker — are surrounded by biologically rich coral reefs and are home to huge seabird colonies. If implemented, the reserve would be among the largest in the world and about three times as large as the Hawaiian monument.

Another proposal calls for protecting more than 100,000 square miles of notoriously rough waters around the Northern Mariana Islands, in the Western Pacific. The area includes the 36,000-foot-deep Marianas Trench.

What is most astounding is the possibility of Bush becoming the “Teddy Roosevelt of the Seas,” a title that he would ultimately earn if the programs succeed. A bit late in his career as commander-in-chief, the Bush programs would aim to create a “blue legacy,” most likely to balance out the other rather unfortunate trails that Bush will leave behind when he leaves office in January of next year.

Better late than never, right?

 

 

 

 

Bush Eyes Unprecedented Conservation Program

by John Nielsen

(NPR.org, May 23, 2008) The Bush administration is considering launching one of the biggest conservation programs in U.S. history.

If implemented, President George W. Bush could, with the stroke of a pen, protect vast stretches of U.S. territorial waters from fishing, oil exploration and other forms of commercial development. The initiative could also create some of the largest marine reserves in the world — far larger than national parks like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. More...