Federal judge vacates designation of 174M acres of critical habitat for Arctic Alaska seals

A federal judge in Alaska this week vacated the designation of giant swaths of waters as critical habitat for two species of threatened Arctic Alaska seals.

The state of Alaska sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in February, asserting that the 2022 critical habitat designation for ringed and bearded seals was overly broad, and could hinder oil and gas development in the Arctic and shipping to communities on the North Slope.

Judge Sharon Gleason said in her 45-page ruling Thursday that the federal fisheries agency did not explain why the entire 174-million-acre area was “indispensable” for the recovery of the seal populations as required. The court found that the federal agency “abused its discretion” by not considering any protected areas to exclude or how other nations are conserving both seal populations.

Gleason ordered for the critical habitat designation to be vacated for an area the size of Texas, encompassing waters extending from St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to the edge of Canadian waters in the Arctic. The vacated critical habitat designation was remanded to the agency for further proceedings.

Julie Fair, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, declined on Friday to answer whether the agency would now pursue a smaller and more defined critical habitat designation for bearded and ringed seals. She said the federal agency was reviewing the court decision.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said in a prepared statement that the “massive” critical habitat designations for both seal populations “unjustly stymie economic activity with little benefit to the species.” Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor welcomed the decision as win for the state and said the protected areas had no sound basis in science.

“The federal government uses the same tactics again and again to prevent the people of Alaska from using their own land and resources,” he said in a prepared statement. “They identify an area or activity they wish to restrict, and they declare it unusable under the guise of conservation or preservation.”

Thursday’s district court decision was the latest development in a yearslong fight over seal protections in Arctic Alaska. Bearded and ringed seals were designated as a threatened species in 2012 under the Endangered Species Act due to concerns that anticipated sea ice declines in coming decades could harm the seals, which give birth and rear their pups on the ice.

The state of Alaska, North Slope Borough and oil industry groups challenged the threatened species designation in federal court, and in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which left the federal protections in place.

The Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based conservation group, originally petitioned for the two species of seal to be designated as a threatened species over a decade ago. The group’s lead attorney said Friday that the “sea ice habitat for Arctic seals is disappearing before our eyes,” and that additional threats from oil development and shipping could make the two species more vulnerable.

”I’m disappointed in this ruling, and it makes me really worried for the bearded and ringed seals who live and depend on Arctic sea ice,” said Emily Jeffers, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a prepared statement.

In her order, Gleason said the Endangered Species Act prohibits actions from being authorized — like construction or dredging projects — that would likely jeopardize a threatened species. With those protections, Gleason said “an interim change” by vacating the critical habitat designation for both species of seal would not be “so disruptive.”