Joel Reynolds's Blog: Reviving the World's Oceans

Say No Now to Pebble Mine

2010-03-23T22:55:27Z

Pebble Limited Partnership CEO John Shively was on the stump last week asking people to withhold judgment, to wait and see whether the consortium of foreign mining corporations behind the massive Pebble Mine project proposed for the watershed above Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska can come up with a plan that won’t threaten the health, environment, and economic viability of Bristol Bay and the communities that depend on it.

Never mind that the 40,000 square mile Bristol Bay watershed feeds one of the most productive salmon fisheries in the world, generating over $400 million in revenue each year and tens of thousands of jobs.

Forget about the mega-mine scheme that the Pebble Partnership has already proposed, including an open pit two-miles wide and 2000 feet deep, and an underground mine up to 5000 feet deep, located at the region’s headwaters, next to Lake Iliamna, the source that, with the Nushagak River to the north, feeds the entire watershed and Bristol Bay itself.

Ignore the estimated 9 billion tons of mining waste containing toxic metals that the project would generate and the devastation that construction and operation of the mine would wreak on the interconnected hydrology of this seismically active region.

Disregard both the scientific consensus that copper, in even infinitesimal amounts, is toxic to salmon, interfering with their homing ability that is essential to their existence, and Pebble Partners’ prediction that Pebble could become one of the largest copper mines in the world.

Pay no attention to the overwhelming opposition of the communities that, for thousands of years, have depended on the health of the fisheries for their survival.

And, whatever you do, don’t think about the disastrous record of environmental failure of large-scale hard rock mines around the world, including mines operated by Anglo American, the very foreign conglomerate behind Pebble Mine itself.

John Shively’s invitation to “wait and see” should be declined.

Pebble Mine is a toxic disaster in the making, and it should be abandoned now. There are a lot of places in the world to mine copper and gold. But there is no compelling reason to allow a foreign consortium to destroy one of America’s great national treasures and jeopardize the health and livelihood of American citizens.

Please take action now and sign our petition. Tell Anglo American that you won't tolerate the destruction of America's natural and cultural heritage in order to line its own pockets.

Stepping Backward Is Not A "Way Forward" For Protecting Whales At The IWC

2010-02-22T19:43:43Z

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) today released a report by the Chair of a small subcommittee charged with negotiating a compromise on a “way forward” for the IWC. There is much discussion in the report about conservation, science, monitoring, governance, and yet-undetermined whale catch limits, and NRDC expects to respond in detail when a careful review has been done. While anyone familiar with the IWC can sympathize with the subcommittee’s goal, the report is, on first reading, a disappointment. The recommended way forward – if adopted by IWC member nations – would be a step backward toward legitimizing commercial whaling.

NRDC has long opposed commercial whaling. Whales are among the most magnificent and inspirational animals ever to inhabit the planet, and they play an invaluable role in maintaining the healthy ocean ecosystems essential to our survival. Sadly, as a result of commercial whaling in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many species of whales were pushed to the brink of extinction, prevented only by the efforts of generations of people around the world determined to “Save the Whales” before it was too late. One of the centennial moments of that movement was the adoption of an international moratorium on commercial whaling, which took effect a generation ago.

Although whaling nations such as Japan, Iceland and Norway have continued to hunt whales for profit since the moratorium – killing over 32,000 whales either under the guise of “scientific research” or reservations and objections to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling – the whaling ban has been a pivotal step forward in the struggle both to save those species decimated by hunting and to recover whale populations throughout the world.

NRDC opposes any plan to weaken the moratorium. And we will urge the Obama Administration, at next week’s IWC Intersessional meetings in St. Petersburg, Florida, to continue this nation’s proud history of whale conservation by rejecting any proposal for the future of the IWC that would invite that result.

The Obama Administration’s commitment to our oceans and to the species that inhabit it is already well established. One of President Obama’s first appointments was that of Dr. Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for restoring our oceans. She promptly committed to developing a national ocean policy, long advocated by NRDC, to ensure the protection, maintenance, and restoration of our ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems. More recently, NOAA has undertaken a review of the U.S. Navy’s safeguards in training with high intensity military sonar and announced a process for improving those safeguards. (Those powerful sonar systems are known to injure and kill deep-diving whales and to cause widespread disruption in numerous whale, dolphin, and porpoise species – as shown here.)

As the IWC decides, in the coming months, whether it exists to protect whales or to regulate their slaughter, we strongly urge the Administration to stand firm in defending the moratorium.

The Cove Exposes Senseless Dolphin Slaughter in Japan

2009-07-23T18:27:34Z

Many people know about NRDC's on-going battle to save whales and dolphins from ear-splitting military sonar. After watching an extraordinary and award-winning new movie, The Cove, hopefully many more will learn about the current battle to save thousands of dolphins from senseless slaughter in Japan.

Directed by Louie Psihoyos and produced by the Oceanic Preservation Society, The Cove chronicles former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry's mission to stop the killing of over 2,000 dolphins every year in the Japanese coastal village of Taiji. Using hidden microphones and cameras, the film takes the audience on a daring journey into the heart of the once-secret Japanese dolphin hunt. The film tells the story not only of what goes on in this hidden cove but the lengths that O'Barry and his team had to go to expose it. It also uncovers the government's practice of unloading contaminated meat on unsuspecting Japanese consumers, including Japanese children, who were served mercury-ridden dolphin meat in mandatory school lunch programs.

With its Ocean's Eleven-style footage that you must absolutely see - and hear - to believe, The Cove could have depicted, but does not, a Dante's Inferno for dolphins. Instead, it places the Japanese fishery in a cultural and political context. Looming behind the film is the failure of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to stop the killing. Although the IWC banned whaling in 1986, Japan still kills almost 1,000 great whales each year under the guise of "scientific research" as well as an additional 23,000 dolphins and porpoises every year. Unfortunately, the IWC provides no protection for small marine mammals like the dolphins slaughtered at Taiji.

NRDC is working to change this. We've urged the Obama Administration to restore our global leadership in the fight to protect whales. We've also asked the Administration to stop the closed-door negotiations with Japan - originally initiated by the Bush Administration - that would legitimize the commercial killing of whales after a 20-year moratorium, and to engage in broad diplomatic efforts, outside of the IWC, to encourage Japan to end its killing of whales and dolphins for commercial purposes.

NRDC is also continuing our sonar work. We are currently fighting to improve mitigation measures for sonar testing and training in the Navy's training ranges. If left unchecked, the Navy's training would result in more than 2 million "takes" - injury or harassment to marine mammals - every year. NRDC has urged the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is currently conducting a comprehensive review of the Navy's sonar mitigation measures, to adopt measures that would protect marine mammals, such as protecting high-value habitat from sonar training.

Although environmental work sometimes has the feel of Mission Impossible, the audience leaves The Cove convinced of both the urgency and the possibility of change. If The Cove inspires you, now is the time to act. The Cove opens July 31 in New York City and Los Angeles and the following week in cities across the country. It's a compelling film everyone who feels a connection to marine mammals should see. To watch a trailer, read reviews or find out when the film will be at a theatre near you, visit The Cove website.

Watching Whales Watching Us in California

2009-07-13T21:53:40Z

In yesterday's New York Times Magazine ("Watching Whales Watch Us"), author Charles Siebert lays out a compelling case for what many people have long suspected: that great whales are conscious, social, interactive animals with complex social structures and cultures. The article is beautifully written and full not just of anecdotes of remarkable whale-human interactions but interviews with leading scientists who have documented that whales teach, learn, cooperate, grieve, and even use tools in their quest for food.

Using the 'friendly gray whales" at Laguna San Ignacio on the west coast of Baja California as the touchstone, Siebert covers a range of topics in making his case - from military sonar (calling NRDC's litigation to control it a "turning point" in the relationship between humans and whales) to commercial whaling to personal and historical anecdotes of interactions with these massive creatures in the wild. He suggests the remarkable proposition that these ancient creatures, once hunted virtually to extinction by humans, may somehow have learned now to forgive and even trust us, in spite of our centuries-old efforts to slaughter their ancestors for oil and other whale byproducts. Siebert argues that whale-human relations have long been characterized by a "stark dualism: manic swings between mythologizing and massacre; between sublime awe and assiduous annihilation, the testimonies of their slayers often permeated with a deep sense of both remorse and respect for the victims."

And nowhere is this more clearly the case than at Laguna San Ignacio.

At this extraordinary place - now a World Heritage Site, a biosphere reserve, and the last undisturbed breeding and calving lagoon of the California gray whale - this large baleen species that migrates each year along the west coast from Alaska was hunted by whalers like Charles Scammon, who would trap the calves in the shallow lagoon as a means of enticing the full-grown mothers within range for harpooning. After reaching near-extinction at levels below 1,000 whales, the species began to rebound when commercial whaling was outlawed in the mid to late 20th Century, with the eastern Pacific gray whale stock now reaching an estimated 18,000 gray whales at least - one of the most dramatic recoveries of any large whale species. It is in this lagoon today that whale-watchers come every winter to ride the protected waters to see and even touch 40-ton, 45-feet long wild animals and their babies in their natural habitat.

As but one example of the continuing, post-commercial whaling threats to these magnificent animals, it was in this lagoon that, in the 1990's, Mitsubishi Corporation and the government of Mexico proposed to build the world's largest industrial salt works - 116-square miles of industrial development, with 17 enormous diesel pumps sucking 6,000 gallons per second from the lagoon 24-hours a day; a million-ton stockpile of salt; a two-kilometer pier into the Bay of Whales where ocean-going tankers would dock to receive the salt for transport to Japan; and billions of gallons of toxic salt brine, stored in ponds adjacent to the lagoon and eventually dumped into coastal waters. Together with the largest environmental coalition ever formed in Mexico and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, NRDC mounted the largest public campaign in its history to challenge and, against tremendous odds, ultimately defeat the salt works project. Now, ten years after President Zedillo of Mexico announced that the project would be abandoned, NRDC and a coalition of international and Mexican non-profits have undertaken a conservation initiative to preserve in perpetuity one million acres around the lagoon through easements and land acquisition - to ensure that the whales will be protected from a return of the salt works project or any other major development.

This is a success story, but the international struggle to protect and restore whale populations around the globe will never end. Charles Siebert's article is a powerful statement of why that struggle, by NRDC and others, is essential.

Editorial Fiction at the Wall Street Journal

2008-06-20T22:25:33Z

If the Supreme Court decides to review the case of high intensity Navy sonar, as the Wall Street Journal yesterday urged, it will do well to ignore the Journal’s error-riddled editorial (“Judge Ahab and the Whales,” June 19). There is nothing “speculative” about the serious harm caused by sonar, as the Navy itself concedes. Though the harm that can be reduced by training with common sense safeguards, the Navy has refused, even in the face of overwhelming evidence linking mass whale mortalities to sonar exposure – a link characterized as “completely convincing” by the Navy’s own consultants.

Nor is there anything “activist” in the decisions of every federal court that has considered the Navy’s sonar training practices, concluding without exception that the Navy is not above the law and that, when it tests and trains with sonar, it can and must do so in an environmentally responsible manner. In the case up for review, the trial and appellate courts found that the Navy has repeatedly violated the law, that its own limited mitigation is “woefully inadequate,” and that the Navy can do a better job of protecting the health of our oceans without in any way compromising the Navy’s sonar training.

There is no question that sonar can injure and kill whales and dolphins. In fact, according to the Navy’s own conservative estimate, sonar exercises now underway in Southern California waters will significantly disturb or injure an estimated 170,000 marine mammals, including causing permanent injury to more than 450 whales and temporary hearing impairment in at least 8,000 whales – an injury that increases the risks of attack by predators. Again, those aren’t wild accusations by sandal-clad environmentalists – those are the estimates of the U.S. Navy in its official “Environmental Assessment” of the exercise.

Yet when they talk to the press, Navy officials still try to obscure the issue, casting doubt on whether sonar actually harms marine mammals. Take this recent statement by Capt. Scott Gureck, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet: “There’s no scientific proof that sonar by itself has ever directly killed or injured whales or other marine mammals.”

That’s right: water and ships also were involved, and the direct cause of death was internal bleeding.

Any hope that we could put aside the tortured semantics and focus on a solution went out the window in January when the Navy ran to President Bush for help. As many know by now, the Bush Administration issued two “emergency” waivers, one signed by the President himself, purporting to exempt the Navy from basic environmental laws in the interests of national security.

The irony is that if any emergency exists, it was created by the Navy itself, which month after month stubbornly failed to comply with environmental laws as it planned the sonar training exercises in question. Since when does failure to comply a law excuse one from complying with the law? That just doesn’t make sense. Nor does the President’s attempt to cast this controversy as an issue of national security.

Does the Navy need to train with sonar? We have never argued otherwise because the Navy has determined that mid-frequency active sonar is a critical tool for defending our ships, sailors and marines from underwater threats.

That doesn’t mean national security is jeopardized when a court orders the Navy to train in an environmentally responsible manner. The Army doesn’t train riflemen on crowded city streets, and the Air Force doesn’t practice bombing sorties over national parks. Why shouldn’t the Navy take common sense precautions when training with sonar in rich marine mammal habitat?

To be fair, the Navy has in the past adopted a number of procedures (albeit under legal pressure from conservationists) to reduce harm to whales. But the Navy has inexplicably abandoned those procedures for its southern California training exercises. After being ordered by a federal court to do more, the Navy asked the White House to excuse it from those common sense requirements -- for example, the requirement that it avoid areas where large numbers of marine mammal are known to be, and temporarily shut down active sonar when marine mammals are detected within 2000 meters of a sonar source.

The alternative, of course, is to knowingly assault these sound-sensitive creatures at close range with ear-splitting, hemorrhage-inducing noise. Whales shouldn’t have to suffer and die for the sake of convenience, and when it comes down to it, that’s really what we’re talking about.

Is reducing sonar harm to whales and dolphins an inconvenience? Perhaps. But the courts have repeatedly ruled that environmental planning to reduce the avoidable infliction of harm to marine life is required by our most basic environmental laws – laws that reflect our collective moral sense that the natural world warrants our respect and stewardship.

It is, after all, our world, too.