The Mudflats

Beluga whale photo from NOAA

While Palin’s lawsuit against the Federal Government to keep the polar bear from protection as a threatened species is still pending, another pesky white northern critter has reared its rubbery head to plague our “Damn the animals” governor. The federal government has now placed the population of beluga whales that inhabit Cook Inlet under the protection of the endangered species act.

When I first came to Alaska, I would often visit a beautiful little pull-out on the Seward Highway in a spot known as Beluga Point. Beluga Point is an aptly named, rocky outcropping dotted with windblown, sculpted trees, that looks over the wide expanse of Cook Inlet, the body of water that hugs the coastline around Anchorage and its environs.  It used to be fairly common, when looking out over the Inlet from this spot to see what at first looked like white-caps, but on closer inspection, turned out to be the bobbing white heads of Cook Inlet’s beluga whale pod. I remember one fourth of July, picnicking on a beach across the Inlet in a lovely spot called Point Posession, when the pod came by. They swam back and forth, no more than 20 feet away, rubbing their long shiny bodies on the gravel bed along the shore for a good scrub. The babies were plentiful, human-sized and grey. The belugas stayed for almost half an hour, looking at us periodically with large shiny eyes, while we ate sandwiches. This is why I love Alaska.

But since 1995, the beluga population in Cook Inlet began to take a turn for the worse.  In the following years, their numbers began to decline noticeably and people started to worry. It became more and more rare to see the belugas at Beluga Point. Some hunting of the whales had been allowed for traditional subsistence hunters. The practice was halted by Native villages. Laws were enacted to keep boat traffic from “harassing” the whales. The numbers declined. Studies were done. The numbers continued to decline. Questions began to be asked about the effects on the whale population of sewage disposal, toxic runoff, and oil and gas exploration in the Inlet.

Uh-oh.  Alarm bells.  As soon as anyone mentions oil and gas, you can bet the hackles of the governor stand straight up.  This is why Palin is so opposed to admitting that polar bears are in trouble. They have the audacity to be living on the North Slope of Alaska, and the oil was there first.  The fact that the arctic ice the polar bears need to hunt is melting at an alarming and unprecedented rate, the fact that animals are drowning because the ice is disappearing, the fact that males are attacking denning females and eating young polar bears to survive, is met by Palin’s administration stuffing their fingers in their ears, denying the scientific evidence, and litigation. The governor has her priorities.   Nobody is getting rich off polar bear powered vehicles.  Nobody is heating their homes with polar bears (a risky plan for sure).  So, there was only one logical course of action. Deny the facts, and sue the government.

And apparently the Palin administration has grown quite fond of the “deny the facts, and sue the government” strategy.  Because, guess what?  They’re at it again.  The Governor’s office released a statement Wednesday, saying that they plan to sue the federal government, in an attempt to rescind the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga as “endangered.”

There are now only 375 beluga whales left in Cook Inlet. The whales are not recovering despite protections enacted over the last 10 years. If you plot the line on the beluga population graph, it’s easy to see where it’s going, and why they are now under federal protection.

The listing means any federal agency that funds or authorizes activities that may affect the whales in the area must first consult with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service to determine the potential effects on the whales, the agency said. A federal action must not jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species.

What impact the ruling may have on oil and gas extraction in Cook Inlet, the proposed Knik Arm bridge or even municipal sewage disposal is still an open question.

Palin, of course, has questioned the scientific evidence that determined the whale population is in decline. She wants no part of giving the whales federal protection, especially at the dawn of oil exploration projects scheduled to begin in Cook Inlet in the next few years. She has previously urged that the whale not be listed, and not receive federal protection, citing concerns over what this might do to the Cook Inlet economy. The whale has become a big white inconvenient speed bump in the road.

The listing has the potential to affect major Alaska projects including an expansion of the Port of Anchorage, additional offshore oil and gas drilling, a proposed $600 million bridge connecting Anchorage to Palin’s hometown of Wasilla and a massive coal mine 45 miles south of Anchorage.

The state does have serious concerns about the low population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet and has had those concerns for many years, Palin said in a statement. “However, we believe that this endangered listing is premature,” she said. Palin in April successfully lobbied for a six-month delay in a listing decision until a count of the whales this summer could be included in deliberations. That count showed no increase over 2007 numbers.

Part of the reasoning behind the endangered listing rests with the fact that the Cook Inlet belugas are a distinct and separate population of whales.

In a nine-page “notice of intent to file a lawsuit” — which the state attorney general’s office delivered Tuesday to outgoing Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and NMFS officials — [Attorney General Talis] Colberg also questioned whether the Cook Inlet belugas should be distinguished from four other beluga populations that thrive off the coastline of western and northern Alaska.

Federal scientists say the answer is yes — that Cook Inlet is home to the only beluga population south of the Alaska Peninsula, and its glacial fjord and tidal estuary setting in particular provides a unique whale habitat.

Says Colberg: “These two determinations are inadequately documented.”

Perhaps Talis Colberg had an adventurous summer where he headed out to sea, and discovered some other heretofore undiscovered population of beluga whales living south of the Alaska Peninsula in a glacial fjord and tidal estuary setting, which makes him doubt all the federal scientists.  He’d impress the heck out of me if he did.  But until we discover this is true, we wonder what kind of additional “documentation” he may be looking for?

While polar bears are beloved by all, and their protection has been covered extensively by conservation groups, and to some extent by the mainstream media, Cook Inlet belugas are hardly the animal rock stars of the arctic. However, the national spotlight is now focused on Alaska as never before. Palin’s notoriety may actually be a blessing in disguise for these animals who otherwise might have declined in obscurity, fighting a lawsuit that might have gone unnoticed by the humans in the Lower 48.

(This post is updated and re-edited from a previous post on Mudflats – Palin’s War on Wildlife Takes to the Sea originally posted on 10-17-08, and cross-posted on The Huffington Post)