Calif. Sea Otter Legal Agreement ‘Big Win’ for Multiple Threatened Species
Government Won’t Abandon Sea Otters, Agrees to Conduct New Study
Published in these newspapers:
Ventura County Star Dec. 17, 2010
Salinas Californian - Dec. 21, 2010
California Progress Report - Dec. 23, 2010
Santa Barbara Press-News - Dec. 26, 2010
Pasadena Star-News - Dec. 27, 2010
Whittier Daily News - Dec. 27, 2010
San Gabriel Valley Tribune: Dec. 27, 2010
Santa Cruz Sentinel: Jan. 2, 2011
(Sacramento, CA, December 1, 2010)
The California Sea Urchin Commission today announced that a legal agreement has been reached surrounding the future protection of the state’s threatened sea otter population.
The settlement agreement, approved last week by the U.S. District Court for Northern California, requires that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reexamine its efforts to protect threatened California sea otters. Specifically, the Court approved settlement requires the Service to comply with all pertinent laws – including the Endangered Species Act (ESA) – and to conduct a new environmental impact study to scientifically assess all possible implication of future actions to protect the sea otter population.
“This agreement is a big win for the future protection of the California sea otter, as well as both the endangered black and white abalone populations,” declared Harry Liquornik, chairman of the California Sea Urchin Commission and a Santa Barbara sea urchin diver. “This brings an end to the ill-conceived lawsuit aimed at terminating the sea otter recovery program without even so much as updating the old 2005 draft environmental study, which was based on outdated information.”
The terms of the settlement recognize the critical importance of marine resource management which uses a broader ecosystem-wide scale rather than a species-by-species approach. This all-inclusive method recognizes that without a functional ecosystem, all species are at risk, not just a single target species.
The lawsuit, from which the agreement stems, was filed by the Otter Project and the Environmental Defense Center in 2009. The California Sea Urchin Commission, along with the California Abalone Association, the Sonoma County Abalone Network, and individual sea urchin divers Peter Halmay and Liquornik intervened in order to push for ecosystem protections for sea otters.
“We had to intervene because the lawsuit sought to compel the government to ignore the ecosystem effects of dropping their protection program and to overlook the most pressing threat to sea otter well-being, that being water pollution,” added Halmay of San Diego. “Instead of dealing with meaningful, yet difficult, water quality problems the lawsuit wanted simplicity – allow sea otters to go find places to survive on their own.”
Plaintiffs initially sought to force a termination of the government’s 1987 plan as soon as possible and without further ecosystem analysis and apparently without allowing the Fish & Wildlife Service to comply with the federal ESA. The 1987 plan established a sea otter management zone to protect southern California's shellfish fisheries and sought to establish a new sea otter population at San Nicolas Island. However, the plaintiffs ultimately agreed with the Sea Urchin Commission and its partners on practically all points – that updating the 2005 study was appropriate; all elements of a final decision should in fact depend on a new analysis; the Service should consider impacts to other protected marine species; and it should also consider the negative impact that poor water quality is having on sea otters.
The 1987 plan established a second colony of sea otters at San Nicolas Island as insurance to protect sea otters from oil spills, allowing for improvements to habitat and conditions for the primary sea otter population along the central California coast. In addition, the plan included measures to protect shellfish in California that are critical parts of the ecosystem, and also an important element of many coastal communities and a shrinking seafood industry throughout the State.
“The ESA requires that projects intended to protect a listed species such as otters should also avoid harming other listed species,” continued Liquornik. “In this case, two endangered native abalone species are a primary prey of the threatened sea otters and the abalone depend on a coastal range that will likely be occupied by the otters if the management program is ultimately terminated. A devastating event was avoided by the court’s ruling,” said Liquornik.
“So what did the plaintiffs get for their lawsuit efforts? They got taxpayers to reimburse them $55,000 in legal fees for an agreement which they could have received with a written request and first-class stamp,” concluded Halmay.
HUNGRY OTTERS STRAY INTO FISHERMEN'S TERRITORY
(Los Angeles, CA, January 30, 2010)------By NOAKI SCHWARTZ Associated Press Writer
The first hint of trouble in trying to save endangered sea otters and protect fishermen competing for the shellfish the creatures eat was when bureaucrats drew a line in the ocean separating the two.
That was followed by an unsuccessful attempt to create a colony for the creatures on a distant island and a more disastrous venture to relocate strays who wandered into what was dubbed the "no-otter zone."
The otters didn't cooperate and their subsequent rebound in Southern California created a classic man vs. nature conflict that could alter a two-decade recovery program and raises the question of what species is more endangered: animals or urchin divers.
At the heart of the matter is a well-intentioned attempt to control nature for commerce that backfired.
"It's a view of the world as if animals are your chess pieces," said Lilian Carswell, who oversees otter recovery at U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
The agency long ago abandoned the costly and ineffective transfer policy, but environmentalists who claim the otters are being targeted filed a lawsuit in federal court last year to extend protections for otters that migrate outside the artificial boundaries.
"They're moving into a hostile environment," said Allison Ford with The Otter Project, which sued the Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife. "We've heard anecdotal evidence of otters being shot, harassed and run over by boats."
Shellfish divers liken the voracious mammals to locusts of the sea and fear that giving the critters free rein will jeopardize their industry. Fishermen deny harming the otters, but claim the animals have devastated the sea urchin population wherever they've gone.
"Based on historic action we think eventually they'll wipe out the shellfish industry in California," said Vern Goehring, executive director of the California Sea Urchin Commission.
Ironically, it was the near decimation of the otters that allowed segments of the fishing industry to thrive. Urchin and shellfish blossomed when the otter were driven near extinction by fur traders who hunted the marine mammals in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Once numbering as many as 18,000 along the giant kelp beds of the California Coast, the species sank to about 20 otters off Big Sur in 1938.
The population gradually rebounded after being listed as threatened in 1977 and the population now hovers around 2,800, including an estimated 70 in the no-otter zone.
About 25 years ago, however, conservationists worried that a single oil spill could wipe out the state's entire otter population. They came up with a plan that involved a compromise to quell shellfishing industry opposition to growing otter numbers.
An experimental otter colony would be planted 62 miles off Los Angeles on San Nicolas Island in the Channel Islands and they promised to confine other otters to the Central Coast. The safety zone designated in 1987, stretched from just south of San Francisco at Pigeon Point, to just north of Santa Barbara at Point Conception.
Anything outside that area was dubbed the "no-otter zone" and stray otters would be rounded up and returned.
The San Nicolas experiment struggled, with most of the otters either dying or swimming hundreds of miles back toward the Northern California mainland. The relocation effort _ at an estimated cost of $10,000 per otter _ also failed.
It often took a couple days to round up a crew of divers who would search in boats for wayward otters. If they were lucky enough to find one, divers had to wait until for the otter to fall asleep and then approach from downwind. Then divers would then sneak up on the animal from below with equipment that didn't release bubbles.
Sometimes the captured and returned otters would swim right back.
"They didn't like it _ it wasn't home," said Jim Estes, a biology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked on the relocation effort that he now calls "naive."
The agency stopped catching otters in 1993 and five years later the otters had small but growing populations off Ventura and Santa Barbara, outside the protection of the Endangered Species Act.
Fish and Wildlife began re-evaluating the policy, but stalled in 2006 when the Navy expressed concerns that their operations might be limited if otter protections were extended. Under the Endangered Species Act, the military and projects such as oil drilling would need to ensure they wouldn't harm the otter.
Late last year, the Environmental Defense Center on behalf of the Otter Project filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Jose to force the agency to finally call the San Nicolas experiment a failure and lift the no-otter zone.
The federal government is fighting the suit, but declined to speak about pending litigation. The fishing industry has asked the court to intervene.
This isn't the first time efforts to save a threatened or endangered species have collided with other interests. From bald eagles to grizzly bears to gray wolves, protecting animals have often produced unintended consequences. Fights are still going on in Wyoming over whether wolves can be shot as predators.
Harry Liquornik, a longtime diver, calls the 4-foot member of the weasel family a formidable threat to his estimated $10 million-ayear urchin industry, which largely supplies the delicacy to sushi restaurants. Otters consume about 15 pounds a day of urchins, crab, mussels, snails and _ if they can find it _ abalone.
Pitting sea urchins, which have about as much personality as a rock with spines, against the sea otters is a public relations nightmare.
"They're cute and have a really big following," Liquornik concedes.
PETER HALMAY: SAVING OTTERS AT THE EXPENSE OF ABALONE
(Santa Cruz, CA, July 19, 2009)------Santa Cruz Sentinal
It was years ago when I began to notice firsthand that prime fishing and swimming areas off the coast of California were becoming more polluted -- much of it apparently coming from local wastewater ocean dumping facilities.
As the pollution increased, especially after heavy rains, marine life die-offs also swelled. In fact, the death rate of the southern sea otter -- a marine mammal listed under the Endangered Species Act ESA as "threatened" that primarily resides along the Central Coast -- rose to almost 300 per year from 2004 to 2008, a staggering increase of 33 percent.
That's why fishermen have worked to ensure legislation introduced by Rep. Sam Farr D-Carmel -- H.R. 556, The Southern Sea Otter Recovery and Research Act -- contains a healthy dose of recovery, and not just research into the status of sea otters.
The House is expected to vote on H.R. 556 any day now. But there's a problem -- the legislation doesn't go far enough.
While the bill provides for identifying the causes and effects of poor water quality on the otter, it must also provide for enforcement and control strategies that will have an immediate and tangible benefit.
It's no mystery that toxic runoff and wastewater dumping into our ocean directly contributes to disease and death of sea otters. A December 2007 study, published by a leading scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game, examined the trends of sea otter deaths and the results of autopsies on recovered carcasses. Researchers found that during the 1990s, 40 percent of stranded sea otters died of infectious diseases originating from land-based sources.
From 1998-2001, that number increased to more than 50 percent and if all diseases infectious and non-infectious are considered, they accounted for nearly two-thirds of all sea otter deaths during that period.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that sea otters off California's coast are dying faster than at any other time in the past decade. The cause: poor water quality.
Yet, the Fish and Wildlife Service has placed sea otter range expansion near the top of its list of recovery strategies, supposedly to escape the pollution in Central California. However, this ill conceived recovery plan will allow the threatened sea otters to share the habitat of two other endangered species: the white and black abalone.
And that's a big problem because abalone is a favorite prey of sea otters. One wrong move will contribute to the two abalone species' demise as they struggle on the verge of extinction.
From a conservationist view, the federal government's plan makes little sense.
Why save one threatened species by destroying two endangered ones, especially when much of the real solution is improving water quality? The needs of all three ESA listed species must be considered together.
If the Service can't get it together -- and there's no indication that they will -- Congress must pass an amended H.R. 556.
The public deserves and expects a comprehensive and scientific plan that will ensure both tangible water quality benefits to sea otters, without jeopardizing the declining white and black abalone populations.
Congress must amend H.R. 556 to let the Fish and Wildlife Service know what's expected of them.
Peter Halmay is a commercial sea urchin diver with more than 17,000 dives all along California's coast. He is also a former member of the Fish and Wildlife Service's sea otter recovery implementation team.
FISHERIES GROUPS CONSIDER SUING FWS FOR FAILING TO IMPLEMENT ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT
(Sacramento, CA, April 24, 2008)------On behalf of the California Sea Urchin Commission and the Fisheries and Sea Otter Conservation Coalition (FSOCC), George J. Mannina Jr., appeared today before the Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Oceans regarding H.R. 3639, (Congressman Sam Farr, Monterey, D.) the Southern Sea Otter Recovery and Research Act which will establish a program of research and other activities to provide for the recovery of the southern sea otter.
Mannina told the subcommittee, these organizations do not believe the legislation was needed because the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) could fully implement the requirements set forth in H.R. 3639 without additional legislative authority if FWS had the desire, the will, and the funding to do so.
"The larger question brought to the front by H.R. 3639," said Mannina, "is the issue of what research needs to be undertaken. We believe there are two answers to that question, both of which involve the important issue of ecosystem management."
Mannina continued, "The first is an ecosystem management issue which could benefit from a more focused research initiative involving the impact of water quality on sea otter conservation and recovery." He stated the consensus among research scientists, is that degraded water quality is the principal causal factor. Sea otters keep dying because, in large part, of poor water quality.
Mannina explained, "The second ecosystem management issue that will benefit from research, such as that contemplated under H.R. 3639, is the interrelationship between recovery efforts for the threatened southern sea otter and the environmental requirements for the recovery of the endangered white abalone."
In addition, he reported that in the absence of any real focus by FWS on resolving these important ecosystem management issues, the Fisheries and Sea Otter Conservation Coalition, together with other organizations, is contemplating the merits of instituting legal action under the Endangered Species Act, (ESA) to force FWS to consult regarding the impact of Federally authorized activities on water quality and also regarding the impact of its sea otter conservation program on abalone. It is important that the needs of all species be considered together, rather that singly, using principles of ecosystem management.
To view the summary of H.R. 3639: FOLLOW THIS LINK.
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