(CN) — Conservation protections for Alaska’s Arctic ringed seals will remain after a federal judge denied the state’s administrative appeal of the National Marine Fisheries Services’ decision to keep the seals listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
In November 2022, the state of Alaska joined the North Slope Borough in suing the fisheries service after it denied their 2019 petition to delist the Arctic ringed seal under the Endangered Species Act. One of the state’s prevailing issues with the listing is that it designates hundreds of millions of acres of critical habitat that interferes with industrial and hunting activities on the North Slope.
“These activities include oil and gas exploration and production, mining and mineral production, navigation dredging, in-water construction activities, commercial fishing and subsistence hunting and fishing,” Alaska wrote in its complaint.
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy spoke out about the land designation in February 2023 after Alaska filed a separate federal complaint over the seals’ critical habitat. As Dunleavy sees it, Washington “continues to see our state as the nation’s sole wildlife preserve” to the detriment of the opportunities that could build a robust economy.
“Nearly the entire Alaska coastline and vast offshore areas are designated as ‘critical’ for one species or another, ranging from whales to sea ducks to seals and sea lions,” Dunleavy said in a statement. “No other state is burdened by the same level of federal overreach created by unnecessarily large critical habitat designations. If other states had the same level of federal designations, the law would be rewritten.”
When challenging the government’s response to its petition to delist, the state argued that the feds failed to cite new information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — namely that it had declined federal protections for the Pacific walrus — an assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other new population data.
On Wednesday, however, U.S. District Judge Joshua Kindred sided with the National Marine Fisheries Services’ determination that Alaska’s petition did not present new information or analyses that justified delisting Arctic ringed seals.
“NMFS provided a rational connection between the facts it observed and its conclusion — namely that Arctic ringed seals require access to sufficient snow cover on top of stable ice, while Pacific walruses do not have such a requirement,” Kindred wrote of Fish and Wildlife’s decision to decline federal protections for the Pacific walrus.
The recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel that Alaska cited involved greenhouse gas emission scenarios used as inputs for climate models. The inputs at issue assumed that international and domestic policy commitments could allow greenhouse gas emissions to peak around 2040 before declining and stabilizing — inputs the government argued that no reasonable scientist would rely on.
“Because current trends indicate there will be continued high GHG emissions and the petition provided no evidence to support a dramatic, worldwide shift in emissions contemplated in RCP 2.6, it was reasonable for NMFS to remove RCP 2.6 from consideration when evaluating whether AR5 provided new information that would warrant delisting the Arctic ringed seal,” Kindred wrote. “Therefore, NMFS’ 90-day finding should not be vacated based on its exclusion of RCP 2.6.”
The other biological data Alaska claims that the agency ignored involved observations of how changes in sea ice have not reduced ringed seal population sizes or affected their population health. Yet, Kindred noted that the 90-day finding did address projections for ringed seal populations — particularly in that they are estimated to remain in the millions — and that observations of their resiliency did not provide new information.
“Having found NMFS’ 90-day finding provided a reasonable explanation concerning the USFWS decision, the AR5 modeling and the updated population data, the court hereby denies plaintiffs’ challenge,” Kindred wrote. “The 90-day finding is upheld.”
In January 2023, the Center for Biological Diversity intervened in the case in support of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The denial of Alaska’s administrative appeal was no surprise, said center attorney Emily Jeffers in an email.
“I’m pleased but not surprised that the court upheld protections for Arctic ringed seals because these beautiful animals clearly need help,” Jeffers wrote. “The Arctic is undergoing dramatic warming, and without sea ice and snow ringed seals can’t build the snow caves they need to survive and raise their young. The court rightly recognized that Alaska’s attempt to strip this imperiled species of protections had no merit.”
Attorneys for Alaska and the North Slope Borough did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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