Judge calls sea lion protections inadequate
Date: 31-Jan-00
Country: USA
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) continues to violate the
Endangered Species Act in its management of a huge commercial harvest of
pollock and other fish in the same Alaskan waters where the
pollock-eating sea lions are vanishing, said U.S. District Thomas Zilly.
A 1998 biological study by the NMFS is outdated, thin on substance and
contains "no meaningful analysis" of the effect that commercial harvests
have on the sea lions' critical habitat, a step required by the
Endangered Species Act, the judge said in the opinion issued on Tuesday.
The biological study "is limited in scope, heavy on general background
information, and deficient in focused and meaningful discussion and
analysis of how these large fisheries, and the complex management
measures which regulate them, affect endangered Steller sea lions,"
Zilly said.
He issued a summary judgment sought by the plaintiffs - Greenpeace, the
American Oceans Campaign and the Sierra Club - that orders NMFS to re-do
its study of how commercial fisheries are affecting the endangered sea
mammals.
In July, Zilly issued a similar ruling that criticised an earlier
biological study conducted by NMFS. But it led to no immediate policy
changes by the agency.
GREENPEACE PLEASED BY RULING
Environmentalists who sued NMFS over the sea lion policies hailed
Zilly's ruling.
"Greenpeace has long been sceptical of NMFS's repeated concessions to
the industrial trawl fleet; now the court has shown that we were not
mistaken," Paul Clarke of Greenpeace said in a news release.
Steller sea lions have been disappearing from the rocky coastlines of
western Alaska over the past two decades, the same period during which
the commercial pollock harvest has blossomed.
The western Alaska population, from eastern Prince William Sound to the
the tip of the Aleutian Islands, is down to about 20,000 from 120,000 in
the late 1970s.
NMFS declared the western Alaska Steller sea lion threatened in 1990 and
endangered in 1997; scientists say the mammals are slowly staving.
Alaskan pollock, a low-priced whitefish, is sold in fillets and as a
paste that forms imitation crabmeat and other food products.
The pollock catch in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska is the nation's
largest commercial seafood harvest. Other groundfish species, such as
Pacific cod and black cod, are also fished commercially in the same
waters.
RULING'S EFFECT UNCLEAR
Zilly's ruling came as participants in the lawsuit - environmentalists,
agency officials and industry representatives - were set to meet for a
mediation session in Seattle. The session was ordered by the judge in an
attempt to reach a settlement in the case.
It was unclear on Thursday whether the ruling will force a cut to this
year's harvest, already underway, said participants in the case.
"That's something that we'll be reviewing carefully with the plaintiffs
and watching to see if NMFS makes any modifications," said Eric
Jorgenson, an attorney with Earthjustice Legal Defence Fund, one of the
groups representing the plaintiffs.
Jim Gilmore, director of public affairs for the Seattle-based At-Sea
Processors Association, also said he is unsure of the ruling's effects.
"It really is a procedural issue at this point," he said.
But his group, an association of factory trawlers that intervened in the
case, fears that harvest reductions may result if the plaintiffs push
the issue.
"If the agency is not providing adequate (analysis) for the the
decisions that they're making, it's the industry that's going to wind up
paying the price," he said. "That's the frustration on our part."