The Bush Administration today took the first step toward opening up 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea off Alaska to oil and gas leasing. The proposal, published in today’s Federal Register by the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service, would allow oil development in an area north of the Aleutian Islands near Bristol Bay that has been designated critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale, according to a written statement from the Center for Biological Diversity.

The North Pacific right whale, once ranging from California to Alaska and across the North Pacific to Russia and Japan, was decimated by commercial whaling and is now the most endangered large whale in the world. Perhaps fewer than 50 individuals remain in a population that visits the Bering Sea each summer to feed, according to the statement. “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, CBD oceans program director. “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.”

In July 2006, approximately 36,000 square miles of the Bering Sea were designated as critical habitat for the right whale under the Endangered Species Act. The designation came as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Center. More than half of the area proposed today for leasing is within right whale critical habitat, according to the statement.

Ironically, the leasing proposal by the Minerals Management Service was made the very same day that a different federal agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, published a final rule in the Federal Register that reaffirms the designation of critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale in the lease area.

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