The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service are being sued by three conservation groups for violations of the Endangered Species Act, specifically failure to protect loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles in U.S. waters.
Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network filed the lawsuit for failing to meet the legal deadline for responding to three petitions concerning the two turtle species in U.S. waters. In two of the petitions, the conservation groups are pushing for the designation of North Pacific and western North Atlantic loggerhead turtles as distinct populations, and for moving the status of the animals from ‘threatened’ to ‘endangered‘.
Increased protection for the turtle’s marine habitats and nesting beaches were also called for in the petitions. Leatherback sea turtles migrate over 6,000 miles from nesting beaches in Indonesia to the coasts of California and Oregon to feed on jellyfish, and the groups asked the Fisheries Service to designate those areas as critical habitat.