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<DIV><BR><FONT size=2 face=Arial><FONT size=4>Groups Sue Over Navy Sonar Impacts
on Marine Mammals</FONT><BR>By Dan Bacher January 30, 2012 </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2
face=Arial>http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/30/groups-sue-over-navy-sonar-impacts-on-marine-mammals-94811<BR><BR>A
broad coalition of conservation groups and American Indian Tribes on January 26
sued the Obama administration for failing to<BR>protect thousands of whales,
dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training
exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon, and
Washington.<BR><BR>Earthjustice, representing the InterTribal Sinkyone
Wilderness Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the
Earth,<BR>Friends of the San Juans, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC),
and People For Puget Sound, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District<BR>Court for the
District of Northern California challenging the National Marine Fisheries
Service's approval of the Navy's training<BR>activities in its Northwest
Training Range Complex.<BR><BR>"The lawsuit calls on the National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS) to mitigate anticipated harm to marine mammals and
biologically critical areas within the training range that stretches from
Northern California to the Canadian border," according to a statement from
Earthjustice.<BR><BR>"These training exercises will harm dozens of protected
species of marine mammals-southern resident killer whales, blue
whales,<BR>humpback whales, dolphins, and porpoises-through the use of
high-intensity mid-frequency sonar," said Steve Mashuda, an Earthjustice
attorney representing the groups. "The Fisheries Service fell down on the job
and failed to require the Navy to take reasonable and effective actions to
protect them."<BR><BR>The groups said the Navy uses a vast area of the West
Coast for training activities, including anti-submarine warfare
exercises<BR>involving tracking aircraft and sonar; surface-to-air gunnery and
missile exercises; air-to-surface bombing exercises; sink<BR>exercises; and
extensive testing for several new weapons systems.<BR><BR>Tribes say exercises
will hurt traditional cultural lifeways, whales<BR><BR>"Since the beginning of
time, the Sinkyone Council's member Tribes have gathered, harvested and fished
for traditional cultural<BR>marine resources in this area, and they continue to
carry out these subsistence ways of life, and their ceremonial activities
along<BR>this Tribal ancestral coastline," said Priscilla Hunter, chairwoman and
co-founder of the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council.<BR>"Our traditional
cultural lifeways, and our relatives such as the whales and many other species,
will be negatively and permanently<BR>impacted by the Navy's
activities."<BR><BR>"Both NMFS and the Navy have failed in their obligations to
conduct government-to-government consultation with the Sinkyone Council and its
member Tribes regarding project impacts," Hunter emphasized.<BR><BR>Founded in
1986, the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit
organization, is a California Indian peoples'<BR>environmental consortium
working to re-establish local Indian stewardship within the Sinkyone region of
Northern California through<BR>land conservation, habitat restoration, and
traditional resource management.<BR><BR>The member tribes of the Council are:
the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians; Redwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians;
Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians; Hopland Band of Pomo Indians; Potter
Valley Band of Pomo Indians; Pinoleville Band of Pomo Indians; Scotts Valley
Band of Pomo Indians; Robinson Rancheria; the Cahto Tribe and the Round Valley
Indian Tribes.<BR><BR>In late 2010, NMFS gave the Navy a permit for five years
of expanded naval activity that the groups said will harm or "take"
marine<BR>mammals and other sealife. The permit allows the Navy to conduct
increased training exercises that can harm marine mammals and disrupt their
migration, nursing, breeding, or feeding, primarily as a result of harassment
through exposure to the use of sonar.<BR><BR><STRONG>High intensity sonar
results in marine mammal strandings<BR></STRONG><BR>Navy's mid-frequency sonar
has been implicated in mass strandings of marine mammals in, among other places,
the Bahamas, Greece, the Canary Islands, and Spain, according to the
conservation groups and Tribes.<BR><BR>In 2004, during war games near Hawai'i,
the Navy's sonar was implicated in a mass beaching of up to 200 melon-headed
whales in<BR>Hanalei Bay.<BR><BR>In 2003, the USS Shoup, operating in
Washington's Haro Strait, exposed a group of endangered Southern Resident killer
whales to<BR>mid-frequency sonar, causing the animals to stop feeding and
attempt to flee the sound.<BR><BR>"In 2003, NMFS learned firsthand the harmful
impacts of Navy sonar in Washington waters when active sonar blasts distressed
members of J pod, one of our resident pods of endangered orcas," said Kyle
Loring, Staff Attorney for Friends of the San Juans. "Given this history, it is
particularly distressing that NMFS approved the Navy's use of deafening noises
in areas where whales and dolphins use their acute hearing to feed, navigate,
and raise their young, even in designated sanctuaries and marine
reserves."<BR><BR>"Whales and other marine mammals don't stand a chance against
the Navy," summed up Miyoko Sakashita, Oceans Director at the Center for
Biological Diversity.<BR><BR>The Navy's mitigation plan for sonar use relies
primarily on visual detection of whales or other marine mammals by so-called
"<BR>watch-standers" with binoculars on the decks of ships. If mammals are seen
in the vicinity of an exercise, the Navy is to cease<BR>sonar
use.<BR><BR>"Visual detection can miss anywhere from 25-95% of the marine
mammals in an area," said Heather Trim, Director of Policy for People For Puget
Sound. "It's particularly unreliable in rough seas or in bad weather. We learn
more every day about where whales and other mammals are most likely to be
found-we want NMFS to put that knowledge to use to ensure that the Navy's
training avoids those areas when marine mammals are most likely
there."<BR><BR>The litigation is not intended to halt the Navy's exercises, but
asks the Court to require NMFS to reassess the permits using the<BR>latest
science and to order the Navy to stay out of biologically critical areas at
least at certain times of the year.<BR><BR>A US Navy spokesman declined to
comment on the lawsuit, while a National Marine Fisheries Service spokesperson
said the agency has not yet received any information on the
suit.<BR><BR><STRONG>Killer whales threatened by both Navy training and water
exports</STRONG><BR><BR>Marcie Keever of Friends of the Earth pointed out the
dramatic impact that the Navy exercises could have upon endangered southern
resident killer whales (orcas).<BR><BR>"It has become increasingly clear from
recent research that the endangered southern resident killer whale community
uses coastal<BR>waters within the Navy's training range to find salmon during
the fall and winter months," said Keever. "NMFS has failed in its duty<BR>to
assure that the Navy is not pushing the whales closer to extinction."<BR><BR>The
killer whales face a double threat now: Navy sonar testing and increased water
exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River<BR>Delta. A NOAA Fisheries
biological opinion released on June 4, 2009 found that water pumping operations
in the Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the
continued existence of imperiled Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River
chinook salmon, Delta smelt, green sturgeon and southern resident killer whales,
which rely on chinook salmon runs for food.<BR><BR>Atta Stevenson of the
California Indian Water Commission said the Commission applauds and supports the
lawsuit filed against NMFS.<BR><BR>"The navy has not provided long term
scientific data to determine that there are no negative impacts on marine
mammals," said<BR>Stevenson. "Based on that fact alone we must fight to protect
all life within oceans that have natural sonar/echo location
systems.<BR>Hopefully common sense shall prevail."<BR><BR>I also applaud the
conservation groups and Indian Tribes for joining together in this lawsuit to
protect marine mammals from<BR>military testing. The militarization of the
oceans takes place in the context of the militarization of police forces
throughout the<BR>country who are currently waging a virtual war against the
First Amendment, Bill of Rights and Constitution in order to suppress
the<BR>Occupy and De-Occupy movements and anybody who dares to criticize
corporate/government polices. The increasing militarization of U.S. society now
extends from the land and cities to the ocean.<BR><BR>For the press release, the
full complaint and a fact sheet, go
to:<BR>http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2012/navy-training-blasts-marine-mammals-with-harmful-sonar.<BR><BR><STRONG>MLPA
Initiative fails to protect ocean from military
exercises</STRONG><BR><BR>Ironically, one of reasons why this and similar
lawsuits are so necessary is because California's Marine Life Protection Act
(MLPA)<BR>Initiative creates so-called "marine protected areas" that fail to
protect the ocean from military testing, as well as pollution,<BR>corporate
aquaculture, wave and wind energy projects and all other human impacts on the
ocean than fishing and gathering.<BR><BR>The initiative is a privately funded
process, overseen by a big oil lobbyist, marina developer, coastal real estate
executive,<BR>agribusiness hack and other corporate operatives with many
conflicts of interest, that is supported by the Western States Petroleum
Association, Safeway Stores and the Walton Family Foundation. The MLPA process
parallels the equally corrupt and<BR>corporate-controlled Bay Delta Conservation
Plan to build the peripheral canal to export northern California water to
southern<BR>California.<BR><BR>In an egregious conflict of interest, Catherine
Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired
the<BR>"august body" that designed the so-called "marine protected areas,"
falsely touted as "underwater parks" and "Yosemites of the Sea" by MLPA
Initiative advocates, that went into effect on the Southern California Coast on
January 1. Reheis-Boyd, a big oil industry lobbyist who relentlessly pushes for
new offshore drilling off the California coast, the Keystone XL pipeline and the
gutting of environmental laws, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the
South Coast, as well as "serving" on the North Central Coast and North Coast
MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces.<BR><BR></FONT></DIV><BR>
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