SAVING THE COOK INLET BELUGA WHALE

Like the legendary Moby Dick, the full-grown beluga whale is snowy white. Yet unlike Herman Melville’s mostly fictitious albino sperm whale, which had only Captain Ahab to deal with, the beluga swims in an ocean chock-full of dangers such as pollution, oil drilling, and global warming. The isolated Cook Inlet beluga whale population must also contend with the increasingly perilous and industrialized waters near Anchorage, Alaska’s fastest-growing city.

In 1999, the Center — along with seven allies — submitted the first petition to protect the species under the Endangered Species Act. In response, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared the population “depleted” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, an inadequate substitute for the more powerful Endangered Species Act.

Thankfully, in response to a 2006 citizen petition by the Center and our partners, the Fisheries Service proposed in 2007 to list the Cook Inlet beluga whale as an endangered species — and then received more than 150,000 public comments in support of endangered status for the whale. But after a decade-long effort by the Center to obtain Endangered Species Act protection for these whales, the Fisheries Service still delayed their listing decision — so the Center and allies sued in June. Just more than three months later, the Fisheries Service put the Cook Inlet beluga on the endangered species list, and in April 2009, the agency took the first steps toward protecting critical habitat for the whale, with a final designation due in October 2009.

Unfortunately, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is apparently more than willing to sacrifice the whale to proposed offshore oil and gas development in Cook Inlet. In January 2009, she led the state of Alaska in filing a notice of intent to sue to overturn the whale’s protections. But the Center will make sure this magnificent, highly imperiled whale not only retains its endangered status but also gets the habitat protections it needs.