The State of Alaska’s War on Whales Continues. Endangered Belugas, Meet the GOP.
23 12 2009A few weeks ago, Cook Inlet beluga whales got some good news.
The federal National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) took an important step toward protecting critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for the Cook Inlet beluga whale in Alaska by proposing to designate more than 3,000 square miles of the imperiled whale’s habitat for protection. The overdue proposal comes after a 2007 petition by various local and national groups to NMFS to list the beluga under the ESA, and on the heels of a formal notice of intent to sue by the Center for Biological Diversity.
Once habitat is designated, federal agencies are prohibited from taking any actions that may “adversely modify” it. Species for which critical habitat has been designated have been found to be more than twice as likely to be recovering, and less than half as likely to be declining, as those without it.
“NMFS has clearly relied on the best available science to identify and designate the habitat needed to give the Cook Inlet beluga whale a fighting chance at survival,” said marine mammal biologist Craig Matkin, Executive Director of the North Gulf Oceanic Society.
Guess what? Looks like Sarah Palin is not the only science-challenged nemesis of all God’s Alaskan creatures. You know… the ones she makes room for “right next to the mashed potatoes,” according to her memoir?
Well for tonight’s wildlife dinner, the guests are Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan and (still, unbelievably) Congressman for All Alaska, Don Young. The menu? Endangered Cook Inlet beluga, sauteed in oil and gas, and served with a light toxic sludge sauce and a little human waste chutney on the side. It’s supposed to be a Republican aphrodesiac. Yummy.
The Dynamic Duo of Sullivan/Young had a cozy little joint press conference yesterday, where they said that the state needs to fund its own scientific research about the Cook Inlet beluga whale. Presumably science on the state level will find that it will be much much worse if the city of Anchorage is inconvenienced by dealing with its own sewage, toxic waste and gigantic billion dollar pork-filled building projects. You know… like other cities do.
“Virtually every department in the city and every business in the region has a stake in this,” Sullivan said, citing potential restrictions on discharges from Anchorage’s water and sewer utility, noise limits at Stevens International Airport, air quality issues, oil and gas development, expansion at the Port of Anchorage and a proposed Knik Arm bridge.
“All those things come into effect with this beluga designation,” Sullivan said. “Every one of those projects could be in jeopardy, and we cannot allow that to happen.”
What happened to those old conservative values of personal responsibility, cleaning up after yourself, and being fiscally conservative? According to Sullivan “we cannot allow that to happen.” Can we expect the right to notice this cognitive and idealogical dissonance? Unlikely.
But enough of him. Let’s talk to the real science expert. Don Young must have been taking online courses in zoology and marine biology while we weren’t looking because apparently, he knows something.
“I personally don’t believe this is a different species of beluga whale (than those) in Kotzebue that we kill and eat many times up there,” he said. “I don’t believe there’s a bit of difference.”
White? Yup. Swims? Yup. (scratches head) Must be the same thing. After all, science is all about “personal belief,” right? Let’s just say we should all be roundly unimpressed with the science curriculum at Chico State College in the 1950s. But in all fairness to them, it could have just been that he wasn’t actually paying attention.
“The state should have the science available to (contradict) what comes forth,” he went on to say. So we can add predicting the future to the list of amazing hidden knowledge posessed by the congressman.
Maybe he just remembers when the same argument happened with the listing of polar bears as threatened. The State of Alaska conveniently withheld email messages by state biologists who agreed with the findings of federal biologists. Some of these missing emails were finally discovered with a FOIA request… others remain a mystery due to claims of “executive privilege.” I guess that makes predicting the future easier.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:32 PM
AKM–there seems to be a missing end italics code somewhere…
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 PM
On the home page, that is… Here in the indiv. post it’s okay.
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:27 PM
Science? We don’t need no stinkin’ science!
Just hire a PR firm, like the Legislative Council plans on doing about the polar bear’s “threatened species” designation.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:45 PM
I’d like to hear more about the money that was supposedly designated for “research” by the state for scientists to come to the conclusions that those in the legislature want regarding development and polar bears. Do these people have no conscience? Do they think that the earth should just eventually be completely overrun by more and more humans and that nothing else should live just for its own sake, not because of something it might be able to do for people? The Republicans and teabaggers are totally without conscience and exist only to fulfill a life of pure greed. I just can’t take it sometimes…
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 PM
The Alaska state Republican congressmen have already declared that “scientists are like attorneys” – meaning that they now view scientists as hired guns to defend or refute a particular point of view, depending upon who’s paying them. I hope that statement says a lot more about the dishonesty and the intellectual malpractice of Republicans than it does about scientists.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:02 PM
Susie Snowflake
Your comments are right on!
We are all connected on this little ball, spinning in space.
We might not be able to survive with out all the plants and animals that keep us alive.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:05 PM
Don Young was a teacher here in my village years ago, he married his wife from Venetie and ran for Congress. He ONLY comes here once a year during hunting season to *cough* vote and visit*cough* with friends.
People were so excited when he was elected but since then, he’s proceeded to destroy everything he worked for and is a joke. There’s still a few die hard believers but not many. My father said Don Young told him and the other students ‘you need a war every generation to help the economy’.
I wrote him a letter telling him I didn’t agree with his decision to support the Iraqi invasion and I received a letter back. It basically said, I didn’t know what I was talking about. Hmmm… My senior year thesis was on the history of Iraqi and Middle East. Hey Young! Your a moron! This fight with Beluga whales just proves it again.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:07 PM
Sorry I was off topic, but really.. he ANNOYS me and the worse part is, my relatives support him because their ‘friends’. Not a good enough reason for keeping an idiot in office. But then again, I’m an ‘elitist’ who finished collage. *wink*
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 PM
The problem with scientists is that they draw conclusions from empirical evidence, instead of understanding that God planted the evidence to test our faith.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:43 PM
Everycognizant human being who was paying attention in science class has heard of the inter-connectedness of the food chain. I guess Young, Sullivan, and their crew don’t understand what the inter-connected part means because according to their way of thinking, humans are not a part of it. Talk about the dumb leading the dumber.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:52 PM
I’d pay good money to see Don young go on a boat ride with Paul Watson.
http://www.seashepherd.org/
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 PM
it will take years for the state to develop the scientific expertise and abilities the Federal government has mustered. You just don’t develop a research and investigative program overnight they had the chance to do so for quite some time now. The political leaders at Fish and Game, in the legislature and in the Governors office blew it. Now its a crisis, what do they expect to gain?
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 PM
Chico State is known as a party school. He might have killed all his brain cells.
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 PM
Don Young and Dan Sullivan sat on their hands for the past decade and now they’re in reaction mode because the corporations are crying the sky is falling. In fact, industry did nothing for years, and only started funding beluga photo ID studies when they say things were getting dire (and they also thought their studies would paint a different story than NMFS story, but instead they confirm NMFS’s work).
Studies of tens of thousands of projects in critical habitat for endangered species shows less than 1% get derailed, and that’s how the law should work – if the project is ill-planned and cannot mitigate harm, then it should not move forward. The vast majority, however, can and do move forward.
Young refers to “false science” – because the facts don’t comport with his world view. This is the war on science, and Sarah’s a leading proponent.
December 24th, 2009 at 1:45 AM
Don is going the way of the beluga. I was going to make a plea for the future,but i realised that don Young is stuck with what he has wrath. That man stands alone.
December 24th, 2009 at 2:00 AM
Instead of fighting the listing of Belugas, Anchorage should be applying for Stimulus grants to install full tertiary treatment of its sewage and stormwater run off.
The issue is not, of course, that Cook Inlet belugas are a different species; (they are merely a different subspecies). Rather, the issue is what role they play in the ecology of Cook Inlet and surround waters, and what impacts result from the serious decline in their abundance. We are not just trying to save a remnant population, but one that fulfills its eco-roles. Perhaps, as some people believe, belugas are simply top predators that skim the cream of fish off the top of the food chain, and do nothing beneficial.
However, the same thing was long said about sea otters. Turns out that sea otters are a keystone species. Their near elimination from California and Oregon had a huge adverse impact on commercial fisheries. So, although otters reduce the abundance of abalone and some other shell fish and impact these fisheries, the otters strongly benefit some commercially important fish.
The same thing could well be true of belugas. This does need to be studied, among many other issues. The sooner, the better.
Stephen F. Stringham, PhD
President, WildWatch
December 24th, 2009 at 2:10 AM
AKM -thank you for calling attention to this topic.
When I think of the assault on wildlife in Alaska it makes me sad.
Whales, salmon, polar bears,wolves, the list goes on and on.
Humans never seem to get their act together until a crisis.
It is $$$$$$$$ over science, denial over action.
Then when the tipping point happens, we become less than
we are now and earth becomes less wondrous and beautiful.
Back to the whales- to bad Anchorage can’t clean up it’s sh*t.
The sewage problem should be addressed. We should do everything in our power to keep Cook Inlet waters clean.
December 24th, 2009 at 5:09 AM
I don’t know why Rep Young and Mayor Sullivan’s behavior here astonishes me… but it does.
The Dispatch reports the Rep said “Don’t take the word of the federal government, that’s the worst thing you can do” as regards this situation.
Oh, right. Let’s take the word of the head-in-the-mud gang…mmm, hmmm.
These two are the epitome of a mindset which extols the wonders of Alaska while pulling the plug on those same wonders.
It’s not like the NMFS is a wild eyed radical environmentalist group. Matter of fact, they move almost too slowly, with all their dadgum fact checking and so on , to make their decisions and recommendations.
Anchorage NEEDS to clean up it’s act on sewage Mayor Sullivan! I didn’t know until recently that there was no tertiary treatment of our largest city’s sewage.Take all your waivers and so on and stuff em!
Get off your buns and find the money to put folks to work cleaning up your own turf!
I’m close to hyperventilating here. Rep Young is sorry proof dinosaurs can and do co-exist with humans and Mayor Sullivan has uncorrected vision problems as regards the landscape around him… It’s the WORK of the dang city to meet the changes and challenges presented to it.
I’m suggesting Lynnrockets borrow from Mr Dylan and take a run at “the times, they are a changin…”
come Mayor S and congressmen
please heed the call
don’t stand in the doorway
don’t block up the hall…
And I’m going somewhere for a bit to cool off…
Village Reader-
Someday we’ll figure out how to get our families to quit voting for “friends ” and to start voting for advocates…
We will.
December 24th, 2009 at 6:38 AM
Sooooo… lemme see if I read this correctly… the right honorable mayah of Anchorage wants laws addressing the discharge of raw sewage into a body of water to be dumped?
Is he intending to do a polar bear jump into waters downstream of the discharge pipe come New Year’s Day? If he’s willing to do that, and survive the experience, then I say let him go for it.
December 24th, 2009 at 6:55 AM
Yon Dung and his right honorable mayah appear to be part of the group which has attempted end-arounding federal wastewater regulations for at least the past decade-and-a-half by having the states do the regulating of municipal wastewater treatment and enforcement. All for profit of their buddies.
http://reason.org/news/show/municipal-wastewater-treatment
December 24th, 2009 at 10:10 AM
All I knows is that I miss seeing Beluga chasing the salmon.
I once had Beluga at my feet at Bird Point during the salmon run, they were chasing the salmon in to the crevasses in the rocks and I has just siting there watching them at the water line. The Beluga would pop up or roll over and look at me watching them.
I miss seeing them like that. For 12 years, I have tried to recreate that experience (with a camera this time) and nothing, I can’t even remember when I saw the beluga running up that way, there is plenty of salmon, that’s not the problem.
December 24th, 2009 at 4:33 PM
chuckle….so the cruise ships get nailed for discharging in the water, but the “Real Americans” of Alaska get to dump their shit in the water ??? Guess it’s to be expected when the former head of the state doesn’t mind living on a dead lake……