Interior Secretary Summons ESA "God Squad" For Gulf Of Mexico Drilling

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has summoned the Endangered Species Committee in an evident move to allow oil and gas drilling to proceed in the Gulf of Mexico without having to avoid harm to threatened or endangered species.

In a notice to be published Monday in the Federal Register, the Interior Department said the committee, colloquially referred to as the 'God Squad', will meet on March 31 in Washington to consider an "exemption under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities" in the gulf.

While the notice said the meeting would be open to the public via a YouTube feed, staff at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said "[A]ll meetings of the God Squad are required to be open to the public; a livestream on YouTube does not represent an open meeting of the government."

"Doug Burgum and the Trump administration continue to blindly do the fossil fuel industry’s bidding and are now seeking to pull off an outrageous and illegal end-run around the Endangered Species Act," said Brett Hartl, CBD's government affairs director. "Rice’s whales, sperm whales and other endangered wildlife could now be exempt from the protections of the law, and forced into extinction just to pad the coffers of the largest polluting industry in the world.

"The law makes absolutely clear that the God Squad cannot meet in private, and yet Burgum and the other sycophants of Trump’s cabinet are too cowardly to meet in front of the people," added Hartl. "Condemning whales to extinction behind the safety of a web live stream is pathetic, and we will be there at the Department of Interior in person to protest this illegal action.”

Interior Department staff could not be reached Saturday for comment.

There are at least 19 threatened and endangered marine species in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA). Among them are sperm, sei, fin, blue, humpback and North Atlantic right whales, and five species of sea turtles, including the Kemp's ridley turtle, the world's smallest and most endangered sea turtle.

According to the New England Aquarium, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster led to the deaths of an estimated 86,500 juvenile Kemp's ridley turtles, or about 20 percent of the known population. More than 300 Kemp's ridley turtles that survived the disaster but were impacted by the oil were shown to have elevated levels of two hormones that can affect metabolism, the aquarium noted in 2024.

The most important nesting beaches in the world for Kemp’s ridley turtles are in Texas and Mexico, the NOAA has said. "Sea turtles throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico suffered adverse effects, including decreased mobility, exhaustion, dehydration, overheating, likely decreased ability to feed and evade predators, and death," the agency noted in an assessment of Deepwater Horizon's impacts.

NOAA has said that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, releasing "134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days, fouling 1,300 miles of shoreline along five states. The scientists concluded that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed thousands of marine mammals and sea turtles, and contaminated their habitats."

This past December the Friends of the Everglades sent a letter to the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to express their concerns around plans to include the eastern Gulf of Mexico in its 11th National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Draft Proposed Program. The group says that oil and gas drilling so close to Everglades National Park could have “huge ramifications for multiple Everglades ecosystems.”

In the letter, the group referenced the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which sent oil onto the beaches of Florida’s panhandle, down to Tampa Bay, and even onto the Atlantic Coast. The current lease plan by BOEM calls for oil drilling as close as 100 miles off the coast of Florida, moving potential oil drilling even closer to Florida than the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

“An oil spill in that proximity, even a fraction a size of the Deepwater Horizon event, would be disastrous for the coastal Everglades,” stated the letter.

The National Park Service has said that the Deepwater Horizon spill affected many park units in the gulf. Parks that touch the gulf include De Soto National Memorial, Dry Tortugas National Park, Everglades National Park, Gulf Islands National Seashore, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park & Preserve, and Padre Island National Seashore.