Good things are happening! An endangered whale gets its protections back, abortion providers score immunity, Trump tells Big Wi-Fi to shrink its coverage, and John Deere is forced to fix its monopolistic practices.
The Right Whales To Save
A dwindling whale species just got its protections back, undoing a federal district court decision striking down a law meant to protect the North Atlantic right whale from the perils of fishing gear. The Boston-based Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision on Jan. 30, reinstating a ban on lobster fishing in a 200-mile area off the New England coast for three months in the early spring when the endangered right whale is present in large numbers.
Lethal entanglement in lobster fishing gear is one of the biggest threats along with boat collisions to the whale species, which numbers less than 380 and is rapidly dwindling. The right whale was once abundant off the East Coast before the commercial whaling era, which peaked in the 1800s, devastated the species. Right whales have been slow to recover, and in 2017 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that regulates fisheries, declared an Unusual Mortality Event for the species, a designation under the Marine Mammal Protection Act that requires remedial action.
