Tell it to the Whales

The Los Angeles Times printed this thoughtful and informative editorial that criticized the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down restrictions imposed by a Federal judge on the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises in California waters.

Tell it to the whales

The Supreme Court was wrong to eliminate some of the Navy’s precautions that help protect marine life.

November 15, 2008

National security is the most crucial responsibility of the federal government, taking precedence over most of its other functions — including the protection of wildlife and the environment. So when a narrow majority of the Supreme Court ruled this week that military readiness is more important than the safety of whales and other marine life, many people, especially on the right, cheered.

But the case of Winter vs. the Natural Resources Defense Council isn’t quite that simple.

At issue were 14 training exercises off the Southern California coast being conducted by the Navy, which was sued after it refused to prepare an environmental impact study. The reason isn’t hard to guess: Evidence is accumulating that the high-powered sonar used in these exercises causes hearing loss, panic and death among whales and other marine mammals, and the Navy didn’t want to have to take steps to minimize the damage. After a few legal twists, a U.S. district judge issued an injunction ordering the Navy to take six precautions anyway.

Even though the Navy has already performed 13 of the 14 exercises using the precautions, with no apparent effect on sailors’ readiness and few disruptions, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court bought the Navy’s argument that the restrictions pose a threat to national security. So the two strongest precautions — ordering the Navy to turn off the sonar when a marine mammal is spotted within 1.25 miles of a ship, and during certain atmospheric conditions that allow the sound to carry farther — were eliminated. The Navy still has to abide by the other four when it conducts its final exercise in December.

Aside from the faulty logic of the majority, which blithely ignored the Navy’s record of successfully conducting exercises in Hawaii and off the Atlantic coast using precautions very similar to those ordered in California, it’s questionable whether the ruling will have much effect because it was narrowly tailored to this particular case. It doesn’t get the Navy off the hook for performing environmental studies preceding future exercises — although, if the Navy or other branches of the military decide to ignore such regulations again, it might make it harder for judges to issue injunctions to restrict their activities. Courts traditionally give broad deference to the military when it claims that national security is at stake, and the Supreme Court seems to have made that deference a little broader.

Still, the zeal with which the military wields such powers depends on who’s sitting in the commander-in-chief’s chair. We trust President-elect Barack Obama to take a wiser course when balancing biological diversity against a few inconveniences for the Navy.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-sonar15-2008nov15,0,7572460.story