Good news! A federal court victory for beluga whales!
NRDC Announcement.
A federal judge has ruled in our favor that the Obama Administration violated the law -- three different laws, in fact -- when it authorized the Apache Alaska Corporation to use deafening seismic airguns to search for oil and gas in Cook Inlet, threatening the survival of its last 312 beluga whales.
The ruling is a crucial step forward in our campaign to protect these rare white whales, which are threatened not only by oil and gas companies but by the proposed Pebble Mine as well.
That court has now stated that the National Marine Fisheries Service gave Apache Alaska a green light by systematically undercounting the toll that seismic airguns would take on belugas.
The explosive noise from seismic airguns can deafen, injure and even kill whales. Apache's sonic blasts will repeat every 10 to 12 seconds -- and could go on for years.
The Fisheries Service predicted that Apache's airguns would harm at least 30 belugas during its first year of operations alone -- a staggering number that the court now says was clearly underestimated.
