Public Justice Statement on Endangered Species Committee’s Vote to Exempt Oil and Gas Drilling in Gulf of Mexico from Endangered Species Act Protections
On Tuesday, March 31, the Endangered Species Committee voted to suspend the Endangered Species Act’s protections of the extremely endangered Rice’s whale and that of endangered sea turtles and sperm whales. In doing so, the Trump administration overrode a National Marine Fisheries Service mandate for oil and gas ships in the Gulf of Mexico that requires them to drive ships at safe speeds in the eastern Gulf and monitor whales’ locations to avoid strikes and death.
Dan Snyder, Director of Public Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Project, said:
“For the first time in recorded history, yesterday our government voted to knowingly eradicate every member of an entire whale species from our planet. It only required the pretext of national security and the ‘aye’ votes of six Trump political appointees. In a briefing room at the Department of Interior’s headquarters, the Endangered Species committee exempted all oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico from the legal requirements of one of our country’s landmark environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act. The committee’s unprecedented and immoral decision will doom Rice’s whale to extinction, which has less than 100 individual surviving members. And for what benefit, our children will ask? So that large oil and gas tanker ships can travel just a little bit faster.
Public Justice supports the actions of our partners to stop this unlawful action. We applaud the Center for Biological Diversity in bringing crucial litigation to undo this action and save Rice’s whale from extinction.”