World Of Hurt

The existence of our world's whales again is threatened, in a direct way, by the occupied white House. The right whale's major breeding grounds is proposed for another lease for oil drilling. This atrocity is almost in a repeat of the action the opened vital polar bear habitat to oil leases while declaring the threatened status of the species.

The Bush administration wants to open 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea off Alaska to oil and gas leasing, including an area north of the Aleutian Islands near Bristol Bay designated critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. The proposal was published in Tuesday's Federal Register by the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), as reported by the Center for Biological Diversity. North Pacific right whales once ranged from California to Alaska and across the North Pacific to Russia and Japan. They were decimated by commercial whaling and remain the most endangered large whale in the world. Fewer than 50 individuals remain in the Bering Sea population.

"Drilling in Bristol Bay would be drilling through the heart of the most important habitat of the most endangered whale on the planet," said Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity. “If the North Pacific right whale is to have any chance of survival, we must protect its critical habitat, not auction it off to oil companies." The CBD reports the leasing proposal was made the same day the National Marine Fisheries Service, another federal agency, published a final rule in the Federal Register naming portions of the lease area as critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. Ooops.

The worst administration in history has no qualms about threatening the existence of a species to give more of our world over to its Big Oil lobby. Strangely, the whale oil that lit our homes before electricity made this whale species rare. In an attempt to keep the oil companies making their forays against the world, it is further endangered now by White House arrogant ignorance.