[Green-Activist] Lawsuit Filed to Protect Endangered Whales From Navy Sonar + NT airstrip news

[Anne Goddard]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "kim" <kkaos at riseup.net>
To: <ts-07discussion at peaceconvergence.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:54 PM
Subject: [TS-07discussion] Lawsuit Filed to Protect Endangered Whales From 
Navy Sonar + NT airstrip news


For Immediate Release, May 16, 2007
Contact: Paul Achitoff, Earthjustice, (808) 599-2436
Marsha Green, Ocean Mammal Institute, (610) 670-7386
Brendan Cummings, Center for Biological Diversity, (760) 366-2232

Lawsuit Filed to Protect Endangered Whales From Navy Sonar

HONOLULU- Attorneys from Earthjustice filed suit today in Hawai'i federal
district court on behalf of Ocean Mammal Institute, Animal Welfare
Institute, KAHEA, Center for Biological Diversity, and Surfrider
Foundation challenging the U.S. Navy's plan to use high-intensity,
mid-frequency active sonar in antisubmarine exercises in Hawai'i's waters.
The planned sonar would emit blasts far louder than levels associated with
mass whale strandings and fatalities.

The Navy has announced plans to use the sonar in up to 12 separate sets of
Undersea Warfare Exercises during 2007 and 2008 in Hawai'i's waters,
including within the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine
Sanctuary and near the Papah&#257;naumoku&#257;kea Marine National
Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Hawai'i is well known as the winter breeding grounds for thousands of
endangered humpback whales, but endangered blue, fin, Northern Pacific
right, sei, and sperm whales also are found here, along with thousands of
whales and dolphins of other species that will be exposed to the sonar. A
whale's keen sense of hearing is vital in every aspect of its life
history, including foraging for food, finding mates, bonding with
offspring, communicating with other members of their species, navigating
through lightless waters, and avoiding predators. Exposure to sonar blasts
can cause serious injury or death caused by hemorrhages or other tissue
trauma, temporary and permanent hearing loss, displacement from preferred
habitat, and disruption of feeding, breeding, nursing, communication,
sensing and other behaviors essential to survival.

In July 2004, more than 150 melon-headed whales congregated in the shallow
waters of Hanalei Bay, Kaua'i during the Navy's biennial "RIMPAC"
exercises. The whales had to be herded back to open water by volunteers,
and a young whale calf was found dead. The National Marine Fisheries
Service concluded the Navy's sonar transmissions were a "plausible, if not
likely, contributing factor to the animals entering and remaining in the
bay." The Navy's 2006 war games were halted by a court-ordered temporary
restraining order, and the Navy agreed to implement mitigation measures.
But the Navy has failed to include most of that mitigation in the upcoming
exercises; its USWEX exercises will occur in addition to the 2008 RIMPAC
war games.

Use of military sonar has been associated with strandings not only on
Kaua'i, but in Greece (1996), the Bahamas (2000), Madeira (2000), Vieques
(1998, 2002), the Canary Islands (2002, 2004), the northwest coast of the
United States (2003), and Spain (2006). Necropsies performed on whales
stranded in the Bahamas and the Canary Islands (2002) revealed
hemorrhaging around the brain and in other organs, most likely due to
acoustic trauma from the use of high-intensity sonar. The Navy itself
concluded that for the Bahamas stranding "an acoustic. injury.caused the
animals to strand.and subsequently die.", and a report commissioned by the
Navy stated that "the evidence of sonar causation [of whale beachings] is,
in our opinion, completely convincing."

In 2004 and 2005, whales and dolphins stranded or died on the coasts of
Australia and New Zealand, North Carolina, and Florida after use of
high-intensity sonar. The Scientific Committee of the International
Whaling Commission, the world's preeminent body of scientists studying
whale populations, has found that the evidence linking mid-frequency sonar
to the mass strandings and deaths of whales appears "overwhelming."

The Navy acknowledged in its Environmental Assessment for the Hawai'i
exercises that its sonar will reach whales at levels up to 215 dB - at
least 100,000 times more intense than the levels at which the whales
stranded in the Bahamas incident - and that the sonar will, at a minimum,
likely significantly alter or cause the abandonment of the whales'
migration, surfacing, nursing, feeding, or sheltering behaviors.
Recognizing it will harm whales in violation of the Marine Mammal
Protection Act, the Navy in January 2007 exempted itself from that law. It
nonetheless refused to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement in
violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, refused to include
protective mitigation, and dismissed as insignificant the impacts to
thousands of whales, including humpbacks nursing calves in Hawai'i's
protected nearshore waters. It also failed to comply with the Coastal Zone
Management Act and National Marine Sanctuaries Act.

Marti Townsend of KAHEA noted: "The Navy is not above the law. Just the
reverse - we are a nation of laws, and the Navy should be setting an
example. Protecting our country includes following those laws, not
skirting them."

The National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency responsible for
protecting endangered marine life, relying almost entirely on the Navy's
assessments, made little effort to analyze the sonar's effects or require
the Navy to implement protective mitigation, such as that to which the
Navy agreed for the 2006 exercises. The plaintiffs have sued this agency
as well, for violating the Endangered Species Act.

Animal Welfare Institute's Susan Millward commented: "It's disappointing
that NMFS abdicated its responsibilities by allowing the Navy to decide
for itself the mitigation it will use. The Navy took advantage of this by
throwing overboard most of the mitigation it agreed to use in the 2006
RIMPAC exercises."  Dr. Marsha Green of Ocean Mammal Institute added, "The
Navy knows protecting whales is possible - it will be using more
protective mitigation this summer in its Talisman Saber exercises in
Australia than in the Hawai'i exercises."

-----

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1938324.htm
Last Update: Thursday, May 31, 2007. 7:17am (AEST)

US, Aust to build massive NT airfield
------------------------------------------------------

Australian and US military personnel will build a special airfield in the
Northern Territory next month as part of an enormous military exercise.

The 'Talisman Saber' exercise will be a test of the US military's ability
to build fully functioning airfields, able to handle giant C17 Globemaster
transport planes, anywhere in the world at short notice.

The site of the exercise will be the Bradshaw Training Area east of
Katherine.

A similar exercise in the US saw forces build an airfield in 72 hours.

The new airstrip is expected to be completed before the end of June.

The Globemasters are Australia's biggest heavy lifting military aircraft
and can carry four times as much as Hercules transport planes.

The personnel are testing new techniques for stabilising the soil, as well
as earth-moving systems that use GPS technology.

The Defence Department says the air strip will stay once the exercise is
over but is stressing that it will not be used as a US military base.

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