Bonnie Erbe

Sarah Palin's Endangered Whale Problem With the Bush Administration

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October 20, 2008 RSS Feed Print
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We truly are in never-neverland. First, the Bush administration did something to protect an animal species. Yes, that's what I said. The Bush administration did something pro-environment, for a change. That in and of itself is history-making.

But wait—it gets better. In protecting the beluga whale in Alaska, the Bush administration directly contravened the antienvironment administration of, you guessed it, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The Bush administration declared, according to the Los Angeles Times,

a small, isolated population of beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet as endangered species, rejecting arguments from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin that these small, white whales were on their way to recovery.

The National Marine Fisheries Service decided to extend federal protections to these whales near Anchorage after their numbers declined nearly 50% in the 1990s and the whales failed to rebound despite a decade-long program to revive the species.

Yes, folks, Palin (who never met a species she wouldn't be happy to hunt into oblivion) is, as usual, doing all she can to plunder Alaska's wilderness and destroy its sui generis wildlife. This time the joke's on her: She was undone by her very own GOP president.

As a practical matter, the new protections mean that new offshore oil drilling, a new bridge and other industrial activities that involve federal dollars or scrutiny will have to show that they will not harm the estimated 375 beluga whales that remain in local waters.

The decision came after Gov. Palin won a six-month postponement of the decision last year, arguing that she and state scientists believe the endangered status was "unwarranted" and that "we've actually seen the beginnings of an increase in their population."

Environmental victories are few, far between, and sweet when they do occur. This one is all the sweeter, as it pits two antienvironmentalists against each other and turns American politics upside down in the process.

Tags:
Alaska,
endangered species,
Bush administration,
Sarah Palin,
environment,
animals

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Hello Mr. Schaefer.

As a 17-year-old girl, I dont know or care much about politics. But one thing I do care about is the environment. Just to use a close-to-home example: I live in Toronto, Ontario. We have a river called the Don Valley River. Due to humans who did not bother to care about the environment, it is a brown, oil-slicked, trash-dotted cesspool. Something that was once beautiful is now putrid thanks to human ignorance, and the animals that once called it home are now suffering from loss of habitat, or have been poisoned and died.

Those ferrets are part of the natural biome, when a predator is removed, the prey multiplies. The prey of those ferrets are considered pest animals, so by removing the ferrets, you just create a pest problem due to an imbalance in the ecosystem.

98% of species that once were are extinct because of the ice age and the great asteroid, NOT human interferance. Its not normal for species to be hunted to extinction in such great quantities. Natural disasters happen. What humans are doing isn't a natural disaster.

Chelsey 7:23PM December 01, 2008

The misplaced, small town mentality on a national ballot, governor probably meant to say that the 375 Beluga whales are great for hunting. That she and her husband fly over the pods on their way to Russia and strafe the unsuspecting targets/Belugas. They rarely miss. And, since it is in open waters, it is environmentally safe. They never destroy trees or shrubs nor do they leave metal fragments lying around to pollute the soil.

As for the Bush administration, his time is running out to have anything positive to list under his accomplishments. After destroying our economy, wiping out billions in retirement savings, starting wars with the wrong countries, supporting dictators, making the CEO's in oil, banking, and insurance richer, saving one species from distinction is a definite plus.

George the Savior, maybe he will be in Cheney's next hunting party.

Mark Laser of OH 9:54AM October 21, 2008

So what does this mean for how we should exist? Well I'll be the first to admit that some people take it too far. I'm not ready to give up electricity, my automobile, the ability to access wild places, or many other facets of my standard of living, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. I think we can both agree that it's not a choice between everyone owning 2 Ford Excusions or living like the Amish. There has to be a middle ground.

Now you say you're sympathetic to the cause of protecting species. That's good to hear, but what are we to do about it within reason? Well let's take the issue of accessibility to wild places. Now if accessibility end up damaging those places, don't you think it's self defeating? I spent 10 years living next to the largest inventoried roadless area east of the Rocky Mountains (it's in NH). It was beautiful. It was also unique, and putting in roads ruins it if that's not regulated carefully. There have been environmental studies done on the subject which say that unanimously. I wouldn't mind an unobtrusive road or 2 for handicapped tourists to view it, the problem with that doing it in that particular IRA though is that the logging industry would use it as an excuse to push their agenda there, which they've been trying to do since the IRA was established, against the better of judgment of Sen.John Sununu (a Republican). You have to understand that it's not that we're not unsympathetic to people with disabilities, the problem is that with current lax regulations it's a constant battle keeping the people who SHOULD be let in able to go in, and keeping other more destructive interests out. It's a balancing act of epic proportions and the people who maintain national parks and IRAs do the best they can, even if the solution is sometimes imperfect. When it comes to developing such places, a little doesn't hurt I agree, but it's better to land on the side of conservatively developing. Afterall, you can always add more later, but subtracting once the damage is done isn't quite so easy. Also, if I might be so bold, I'm sympathetic, but no one forces you to live in the urban sprawl of SOCAL (I used to live there as well).

Likewise I don't think that everybody has to live in an urban area, but we have to balance that out. That's one thing I think Western Europe (Germany in particular) does better than we do, though God knows we try. In Goffstown, NH where I lived for awhile, there was a 2 acre land law. Privacy was great, but we sucked up land like locusts, and we HAVE damaged the NH ecology greatly. We can live in towns, but if we made it a point to condense those towns a bit it'd go a long ways. All in all though, it's not just develop that's bad, in fact only 5% of the US is developed. It's WHAT AND HOW we develop that's important. Projects like ANWR drilling and the Yazoo pumps are far different than a road or path through the woods, or a spread out town. We can permit building, we just have to be smart about what we allow

Corey Simmonds of 9:32PM October 20, 2008

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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