In mid-March, environmentalists asked a federal judge in Brunswick, Georgia, to determine whether to stop the U.S. Navy from building an offshore training range they say could further endanger right whales.
The proposed $100 million training range would include an array of cables and sensors for training warships, submarines and aircraft about 50 miles off the Atlantic coast of southern Georgia and northern Florida.
Groups bringing the lawsuit say the project is too close to waters where right whales migrate near shore to birth calves each winter. WIth only about 400 of the endangered whales remaining, experts say a single death brings them closer to extinction.
“It’s possible we could find lots of right whales out on the range” along with their babies, said Catherine Wannamaker, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, in legal arguments Thursday before the judge.
The Navy says installing 300 sensors and attached cables on the undersea range would pose virtually no threat to the whales because construction would be suspended during the calving season from November to April. Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said she planned to rule “fairly quickly.”
Print
