The Center for Biological Diversity has filed an emergency lawsuit against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in Washington, D.C., to prevent him from convening the Endangered Species Committee, also known as the Extinction Committee or the "God Squad," on March 31. Burgum’s plans to summon the committee were made public on March 16 in a notice on the Federal Register.
According to the Center, Burgum wants the committee to approve the extinction of the extremely endangered Rice’s whale and the killing of endangered sea turtles and sperm whales by overriding a National Marine Fisheries Service requirement for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry to drive ships at safe speeds in the eastern Gulf and monitor the location of whales to avoid strikes and deaths.
“Burgum’s extinction committee is immoral, illegal and unnecessary,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no emergency, no legal basis to convene the committee, and no legal way to approve the extinction of Rice’s whales.”
The Endangered Species Act’s Extinction Committee is very rarely convened because of strict, narrow standards for its invocation. The last time it met was in 1991 under George H.W. Bush.
The lawsuit is based on the fact that the Endangered Species Act stipulates that the committee can only convene 1) in response to an application made within 90 days of the completion of a biological opinion, which 2) concludes that an endangered species’ existence is being “jeopardized” and there is no “reasonable and prudent alternative” to the action. It must 3) hold a public hearing, including witness testimony, and 4) be presided over by an administrative law judge. Burgum’s planned meeting violates all these requirements.
Ten months ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion concluding that oil industry ship strikes were jeopardizing the existence of the endangered Rice’s whale, which lives only in the Gulf of Mexico, and harming endangered sperm whales and sea turtles. This followed an earlier 2020 opinion also reaching the same conclusion.
The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 caused the Rice's whale population to collapse. Today, there are only about 51 individuals left.
In response, the agency established “reasonable and prudent alternatives” requiring the industry to drive boats at slower speeds within the whale’s core habitat in the eastern Gulf and to monitor the location of Rice’s whales to avoid accidently striking and killing them. The biological opinion does not prohibit or limit the amount of oil and gas that can be drilled.
Instead of holding a public hearing as required by law, Burgum has announced that it will only be live-streamed on YouTube. Burgum also hasn’t appointed a professional administrative law judge to oversee the hearing.
“Slowing boat speeds is not just reasonable, it’s easy, and it’s the absolute minimum the oil and gas industry can do to save Rice’s whales from extinction,” said Suckling.
On March 16 the Center sent a letter to all six members of the Extinction Committee demanding that documents about the scope of the exemption be provided to the public and that the meeting be open to the public, but it has not received a response.
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