Environmental groups are pushing to intervene against a conservative-backed effort to overturn boat speed limits in the Atlantic Ocean aimed at protecting one of the most endangered whale species.
Since 2008, NOAA has imposed seasonal speed limits of 10 knots on vessels 65 feet and longer in areas along the East Coast to protect the North Atlantic right whale, which is vulnerable to vessel strikes and has fewer than 400 individuals remaining. Around 70 females are estimated to be reproductively active, while the greatest threats to the species are getting hit by boats or entangled in fishing gear.
“The speed limit rule is a slender thread protecting North Atlantic right whales from extinction, and if it’s ripped away these majestic animals could plunge into the abyss,” Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
The Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Whale and Dolphin Conservation and the Conservation Law Foundation filed Monday to intervene in the legal proceedings in federal court in New York.
