Kate Wing's Blog
It's just too much work to worry about whales
September 11, 2007
Posted by Kate Wing in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Andrew, I can't believe you didn't blog the whale lawsuit decision on Aug. 31st! I mean, it wasn't in our favor, but that seems like even more reason to talk about it. The Navy won an appeals court decision in San Francisco, of all places, where there are whales swimming 1000 yards from the courthouse. Our whale folks have been working on this for years and there's a long list of "simple things you can do to keep from deafening whales" for the Navy, including picking your testing times to stay out of the paths of whales and using passive sonar to check for whales before you test your new devices. These are not insurmountable barriers. It's plain wrong to set up this false dichotomy between national defense and environmental protection and I'm disappointed that the court bought into that argument. With all due respect to the judge who cited our current wars "with two countries" I would like to see the evidence that it's our lack of submarine detection that's the problem there.
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