Dems blast GOP plan to limit protections for Rice’s whale

“This bill is a slap in the face to conservation science,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said at a hearing.

October 26, 2023

Democrats are pushing back at a House Republican effort to block a Biden administration proposal that gives more protected space in the Gulf of Mexico to the endangered Rice’s whale.

At a hearing of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries on Wednesday, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the ranking member, said the GOP effort — part of a bill sponsored by Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) — read “like a love letter to the oil and gas industry.”

Among his complaints, Huffman said the bill, H.R. 6008, would give energy officials “a special seat at the table” in designing rules on protected habitat for the whales.

“This bill is a slap in the face to conservation science,” Huffman said. “The decisions we make must be based on best available scientific and commercial data, not oil and gas profits.”

The dispute centers on a recent court settlement between the Biden administration and conservation groups that would expand the protected habitat for Rice’s whales in the Gulf of Mexico.

While supporters said it would help a species that has dwindled to roughly 50 in total and requires more help from the federal government to survive, Graves and other opponents fear the settlement could result in a loss of thousands of jobs in Gulf states by protecting too much ocean space.

NOAA has proposed designating more than 28,000 square miles in the Gulf as critical habitat for the whales.

“This equates to an area of about eight times the size of Washington, D.C., for each individual animal assuming the animals are distributed uniformly, and we know they are not,” said Alex Loureiro, scientific director for the EnerGeo Alliance, a global trade organization based in Houston.

She also told the subcommittee that the move was “overly broad” and not based on science.

Graves defended his bill at the hearing, saying the federal government wanted to approve the plan with “no public comment, no scientific rigor or anything along those lines.”

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By:  Rob Hotakainen
Source: E&E Daily