[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 5/29/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

May 29, 2009

 

3. Watersheds –

 

Environmentalists sue to protect sea turtles off US coasts

The Associated Press

 

Environmentalists sue to protect sea turtles off US coasts

The Associated Press – 5/29/09

By Jason Dearen

SAN FRANCISCO — Environmentalists want a federal judge to force fisheries managers to take action on lawsuits seeking stronger protections for sea turtles.

 

Three groups — Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sea Turtle Restoration Project — filed a complaint today in San Francisco federal court, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service have violated the Endangered Species Act by not responding within 12 months to lawsuits asking for the protections.

 

Lawyers for the groups said the initial three petitions were filed in 2007, and that the delay is hurting the waning populations of leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles off the U.S. coasts.

 

"At the same time, the fisheries service is dawdling in its legal response," said Santi Roberts, the California project manager of Oceana. "They are pushing to open up fisheries off the West Coast that they know will catch and kill sea turtles."

 

Two of the petitions ask that populations of loggerheads in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans be upgraded from a threatened species to the more legally protected endangered classification.

 

Jim Milbury, a spokesman with the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the reason for the slow response was the complexity of studying turtles that migrate thousands of miles. He said the agency has a team devoted to figuring out where exactly the critical habitats are for the turtles, an area that goes far beyond U.S. waters.

 

"One of the reasons it takes so long is it's extremely complicated to try to determine the critical habitat of a species that swims over 6,000 miles underwater," Milbury said.

 

Leatherbacks are already listed as endangered, but a third petition proposes the establishment of a critical habitat off the Oregon and California coasts where these turtles feed.

 

Sea turtles swim thousands of miles from their nesting grounds in Japan, Indonesia, Australia and Mexico to feed on the West Coast.

 

The hulking leatherbacks can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and stretch 8 feet long. They can swim up to 3,000 feet beneath the sea while journeying thousands of miles to feed on jellyfish after nesting. Because of their enormous size, the turtles also get tangled in long fishing lines and nets during their migration.

 

In 1982, there were about 115,000 adult female leatherbacks in the world, and 14 years after that, studies found only about 34,500 remained total.

 

"In the Pacific Ocean, leatherback populations are dwindling at all major nesting beaches, culminating in a 95-percent decline over the last two decades. If current trends continue, Pacific leatherbacks are predicted to go extinct within the next few decades," the groups' lawsuit states.

 

The smaller, reddish brown loggerhead turtles are listed as threatened because of fishing and the destruction of their nesting grounds throughout the world. The loggerheads travel to the West Coast to feed on crustaceans and mollusks after breeding in Japan, and also nest in Florida. #

 

http://www.contracostatimes.com/bay-area-living/ci_12471694

 

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