For more than 50 years, the MMPA has helped sustain healthy populations of whales, dolphins, manatees, and more. Not a single species has gone extinct since it was enacted.
But a new set of amendments proposed during a House Natural Resources subcommittee meeting could change all that.
The proposed amendments would eliminate limits on annual marine mammal deaths, narrow the law’s definition of “harm” to only apply to instances of direct injury, and get rid of goals around reducing deaths in commercial fisheries. Ultimately, they would compromise our most effective tools for mitigating marine mammal loss, give extractive industries carte blanche to expand their operations, and lead to more marine mammals on the endangered species list.