After White House Pressure, Agency Scales Back Whales Protection Rule

After White House Pressure, Agency Scales Back Whales Protection Rule
by Paul Kiel - August 26, 2008 12:10 pm EDT


Credit: NOAA


The Bush administration has not been shy in questioning the conclusions of government scientists. Years-long rulemaking processes have been shunted by White House questions and objections, reports and congressional testimony heavily edited, and in some cases troublesome scientists entirely removed from areas of responsibility. In one survey, nearly half of EPA scientists who responded complained of political interference.

Here is another episode. Yesterday, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued new proposed guidelines for the protection of North Atlantic right whales. According to the new rules, ships will have to slow to 10 nautical miles per hour within 23 miles of certain ports at certain times of year. While a significant measure to protect the whales, of which only about 300 remain, prior guidelines had extended the protected zone to about 34.5 miles from shore.

The reason for the restriction was pretty straightforward: fast moving ships had killed about 20 whales in the past 20 years, government scientists found (PDF). The whales, in fact, earned the name "right whales" because they were such an easy quarry for whalers.

For four years, government scientists studied right whale deaths in order to develop rules to protect them. But when they finally presented the White House with a proposed rule in 2007, they found the administration unimpressed. According (PDF) to correspondence produced by House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA), the vice president's office in particular had been a particularly harsh critic, complaining that scientists had no "hard data" to support the guidelines. Officials in the White House Council of Economic Advisors had apparently crunched their own numbers on right whale collisions, and their conclusions jibed with those reached by the shipping industry (PDF).

more...

http://www.propublica.org/article/after-white-house-pressure-agency-scales-back-whales-protection-rule-826/

I always cringe when stories about our treatment of the whales come up.

But it's information we need to have.

fuck the air, fuck the water - fuck these cretin motherfuckers
who annihilate every single thing they touch -

sorry. I can't deal.