Saving Seafood

Judge in Alaska sets aside critical habitat designation for threatened bearded, ringed seals

September 30, 2024 — A judge in Alaska has set aside a federal agency’s action designating an area the size of Texas as critical habitat for two species of threatened Arctic Alaska seals.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason last week found the National Marine Fisheries Service did not explain why the entire 174-million-acre (70-million-hectare) area was “indispensable” to the recovery of the ringed and bearded seal populations. Gleason said the agency “abused its discretion” by not considering any protected areas to exclude or how other nations are conserving both seal populations, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

She vacated the critical habitat designation, which included waters extending from St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to the edge of Canadian waters in the Arctic, and sent the matter back to the agency for further work.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Alaska prevails in challenge to critical habitat designation for threatened seals

September 28, 2024 — It’s back to the drawing board for the federal agency tasked with designating critical habitat for ringed and bearded seals in Alaska after a federal judge sided on Thursday with the state, which said the agency overreached in the protections.

In 2022, the National Marine Fisheries Service designated over 160 million acres of water spanning from the Alaska shoreline to the international dateline in much of the Bering Sea, as well as the shelf of the Beaufort Sea and all of the Chukchi Sea, as critical habitat for the seals.

Alaska sued the agency and the Center for Biological Diversity which intervened in the case, in early 2023, describing the designation as unprecedented and accusing the agency of violating environmental laws.

U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason agreed with the state that the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t act in accordance with the Endangered Species Act when making the designations.

“Simply because NMFS is unable to identify a less extensive, specific geographic location for breeding or molting does not explain why the 160-million-plus-acre areas it identified as critical habitat are ‘necessary’ or ‘indispensable,’” the Barack Obama appointee wrote of ensuring the seals’ survival and recovery.

The service listed both subspecies of seals — the Arctic ringed seals and the Beringia distinct population segment of bearded seals — as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2012. The listing granted the seals more protections, including the designation of critical habitat.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Court backs seal protections on climate change grounds

October 25th, 2016 — A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Obama administration had the right to use climate change to justify federal protections for the bearded seal.

The ruling from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court ruling from 2014 and upheld the 2012 decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to designate the bearded seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

 The ruling is an important victory for the Obama administration and could help build a precedent of using climate change forecasts for decisions like species protections.

The case hinged on an argument from the oil industry and the state of Alaska that the NMFS relied on climate projections that were not reliable for the time period for which the agency used them.

“This case turns on one issue: When NMFS determines that a species that is not presently endangered will lose its habitat due to climate change by the end of the century, may NMFS list that species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act?” the appeals court asked in its ruling, answering in the affirmative.

Read the full story at The Hill