[CPEO-MEF] Activists Plan Fight for Marine Mammals

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

WASHINGTON POST
Activists Plan Fight for Marine Mammals
Exempt From Some Rules to Protect Animals, Navy Might Seek to Alter
Sonar Limits
By Marc Kaufman
Sunday, November 16, 2003; Page A11

The Navy won a backroom congressional victory last week that allows it
to get out from under laws that protect whales, dolphins and other
marine mammals, but in the process it touched off what could be a
bruising battle over the future of one of the nation's most popular
environmental measures.

Environmental advocates and their congressional allies, including a
handful of Republicans, are promising to mount a concerted effort next
year to overturn the Navy provisions and to turn protection of the
appealing and often endangered marine creatures into an election-year
issue.

Advocates for the oceans say there is a great deal at stake: They call
the changes the biggest "rollback" of the Marine Mammal Protection Act
since it was passed 30 years ago, and predict they will result in the
death of many more whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Apparently encouraged by its triumph, the Navy has served notice that it
might try to modify a court agreement it accepted last month that
sharply limits where it can deploy a new low-frequency sonar system
designed to detect quiet diesel submarines. Environmentalists say the
new sonar is so loud that it can harm and even kill noise-sensitive
whales and dolphins.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45873-2003Nov15.html

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