Wildlife activists are asking the federal government to enlarge an area off the Florida-Georgia coast where special efforts are made to protect endangered right whales.
The groups say government research shows that the places the government calls whales’ critical habitat are just fractions of the territory up and down the East Coast that the animals need in order to eat, raise their young and congregate.
“Right now, we have three little boxes of critical habitat. … Right whales are obviously in lots of places beyond those three little boxes,” said Sharon Young, marine issues field director for the Humane Society of the United States.
The Humane Society was among five groups that filed a petition last week for the National Marine Fisheries Service to re-evaluate what areas are really critical to the whales, which number fewer than 400.
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