The U.S. government is failing to adequately protect the world’s oldest and most imperiled sea turtles, leaving them vulnerable to capture and injury off the California and Oregon coasts, according to a lawsuit filed by three environmental groups in a San Francisco federal court Thursday.
New protections for the turtles, including as few as 3,000 nesting females remaining in the world, would result in stricter controls on gillnet and longline fishing, oil drilling and wave-energy projects, the groups argue.
The western Pacific leatherbacks travel 6,000 miles from Indonesia to forage for food off the Golden Gate, and the North Pacific loggerheads come from the Japanese archipelago to feed from Alaska to Baja.
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