Another Victory for the Whales

NYT reports that, "Thousands of square miles off Alaska have been designated as critical habitat for North Pacific right whales, considered the most endangered whale in the world.

The federal rule published Thursday designates some 36,750 square miles in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as critical habitat for right whales. The rule takes affect Aug. 7.

At least 11,000 of the slow-moving whales -- prized by commercial whalers for their oil and baleen -- once swam the waters of the North Pacific. The whales were listed as endangered in 1973 and there are now believed to number fewer than 100 in waters near Alaska. A few hundred more may remain closer to Russia.

With so few whales remaining, scientists had a challenge coming up with the proper criteria for designating habitat, said Brad Smith, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Anchorage."

The report makes clear that the Bush administration was dragging its heels and it took an "activist judge" to give the whales a shot at survival: "Brent Plater, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity which filed a lawsuit in 2000 to get critical habitat designated for the whales, said species that get critical habitat protection are twice as likely to recover.

Last year, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the National Marine Fisheries Service to come up with its critical habitat proposal or explain why it could not. The judge told the agency it could not study the issue any longer but had to use the facts already at hand.

Plater said in the end the Fisheries Service did a good job.

''It is a good designation. It is based on solid sighting evidence,'' he said.

The next step is to make sure that other federal agencies that oversee activities in the designated areas cooperate with the rule to help the whales recover, Plater said.

If they don't, the future is clear, he said.

''Then we are going to end up back in court,'' Plater said."