Marine animals are innocent victims of war on terror
2005-02-09 -- 10:48 p.m.

Under the cynical pretext of protecting national security, the Bush administration strong-armed the Senate Armed Services Committee into approving the most far-reaching rollback of marine mammal protection in the last 30 years. It exempts the U.S. military from obeying core provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. Because these unprecedented exemptions are part of a "must-pass" defense bill, they were quickly approved by both the House and Senate, and President Bush signed the bill into law. What do these new exemptions mean in the real world? It will now be far easier for the U.S. military to harass and kill whales, dolphins and other marine mammals with high-intensity sonar and underwater explosives.

The armed forces will no longer be limited to harming or killing a "small number" of animals. In another ominous change, the new law allows the military to entirely exempt itself from all environmental review under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In the past, NRDC has used that process to block destructive activities like the detonation of tons of explosives in sensitive marine areas. Finally, the military will now be allowed to destroy the habitat of endangered birds and mammals that live on 25 million acres of land under the Pentagon's jurisdiction. The Bush administration claims that these drastic steps are necessary because environmental laws are compromising combat readiness for the war on terror. Baloney! Even the EPA's own administrator testified last spring that she couldn't name a single training mission anywhere in the country that had been delayed or canceled because of environmental restrictions. Make no mistake, this White House has cynically exploited the war in Iraq as a convenient opportunity to try to give the Pentagon what it has always sought: a free pass to trample our environment and carte blanche to harass marine mammals in the course of testing its weapons and sonar. It is a telling measure of this administration's hatred of the environment that the bill was even more destructive to marine mammals than what the Pentagon itself had asked for!

one result:
Giant squids, which grow up to 60 feet long, are among the most mysterious of marine animals. They live in such deep, dark ocean waters that they have never even been seen alive. Recently, a rash of dead giant squids has been washing up on the Spanish coast. Now scientists think they know why: noise pollution. Offshore oil companies are using sonar-which emits loud, low-frequency sounds-to chart the ocean floor. When Spanish researchers from the Institute for Marine Investigation in Vigo examined the dead squids, they found extensive internal injuries, including badly damaged ears.