Endangered Species Protections Lifted in Gulf for Big Oil

This week a committee of Trump administration officials voted unanimously to exempt the oil and gas industry from requirements of the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf of Mexico. The exemption – which will  lift protections for endangered whales, turtles, and other species – is being invoked now for “national security.”

The ruling is said to jeopardize the existence of Rice’s whale, a critically endangered species and the only whale species endemic to US waters. There are only 51 of these creatures alive, most of which are tagged with geolocation trackers. The species suffered losses following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and has lived in precarity since.

The Gulf of Mexico (now called the “Gulf of America” in Trumpworld) is also home to a number of other endangered or threatened animals, including five species of sea turtle, giant manta rays, sperm whales, and a number of coral species.

The move to exempt oil companies from following basic precautions to protect endangered species – such as reducing boat speeds in areas where Rice’s whales are known to be – was made by the six-member Endangered Species Committee, known as the “God Squad” because it makes life and death decisions.

The God Squad hadn’t convened in more than three decades until this week, but Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the committee an exemption for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf was “necessary for reasons of national security.” Those reasons are directly related to US actions in the Middle East. “Disruptions to Gulf oil production doesn’t hurt just us, it benefits our adversaries,” Hegseth told the committee.

Environmental groups are now lining up to challenge the exemption in court. “There’s no rational way to claim that national security interests require vaporizing the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf of Mexico,” Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, tells CNN.

Some, like Natural Resources Defense Council's director of marine mammal protection Michael Jasny, fear the Gulf exemption is just the beginning, “a thing that could be invoked at any time, almost for any purpose,” as he told PBS News.

“If you can declare an emergency to just kill sea turtles and manatees and whales in the Gulf, you know no species is safe.”

Photo credit:  NOAA