National Wildlife "Refuges" have become playgrounds for hunters, trappers, off-road vehicle operation, jet skis, water skiers and snowmobiles despite the fact over 80% of Americans are opposed to killing and disturbing wildlife there.

The Ocean Futures Society headed by Jean Michel Cousteau is exploring the sea around the Northwestern Hawaian Islands archipelago ending in Kure in collaboration with native Polynesians and a variety of marine scientists.  The region is proposed as the 14th National Marine Sanctuary. If established, the sanctuary would be 5 times larger than the existing 13 marine refuges combined. Its 340,000 square miles contain 85% of the coral reefs under U.S. jurisdiction.  The islands provide nesting grounds for green sea turtles, monk seals and millions of seabirds.  An estimated 100,000 albatrosses and petrels die every year because of the  commercial long line fishing industry.  The effect of increasing amount of plastic debris from ocean dumping on these birds is of particular concern.

Court sides with sea turtles. A federal appeals court has overturned a lower-court ruling and ordered the NMFS to assess the impact of California's long-line fishing fleet on birds and endangered sea turtles, especially the critically imperiled leatherback, before allowing fishers to continue using lines of baited hooks up to 20 miles long.  Most of the long-line fishing fleet used to operate out of Hawaii but was "shut down a few years ago" when a similar lawsuit led to a review that found the practice "too destructive" to the sea turtles and birds. "Scientists fear that leatherback turtles will go extinct in the Pacific within 10 to 30 years unless long-line practices are changed."

Judge overturns Bush permissive LFA sonar policy. Within a week of  the National Marine Fisheries Service authorizing a one-year deployment of two Navy ships equipped with the controversial Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System - Low  Frequency Active Sonar,  federal judge Elizabeth LaPorte ruled that the "new high-intensity sonar system violates numerous federal environmental laws and could endanger whales, porpoises and fish"  and "irreparably harm" marine life in general. The decision blocks  LFA deployment until the Navy negotiates "limits on its use" with conservation groups like NRDC and HSUS which sued over the planned deployment. According to NRDC, the ruling "recognizes that during peacetime, even the military must comply with  our environmental laws" and is "a reprieve not just for whales, porpoises, and fish but ultimately for all of us who depend for our  survival on healthy oceans."  In another suit, the navy said it did not plan to use LFA in the event of hostilities.

Improved TEDs: NOAA Fisheries has instituted new rules to protect endangered and threatened sea turtles by ruling that shrimp boats in the Gulf Mexico must use "larger turtle excluder device (TED) openings in their nets".  The present TED openings are too small to allow mature sea turtles to escape.  The new TEDs are expected to reduce the number of annual deaths of leatherback sea turtles by 97%  loggerhead mortality due to shrimp trawling by 94%. Oceana reports that shrimpers in Georgia have used the larger TEDs "for years with minimal shrimp loss." Of 8,000 public comments on the new rule "93% supported greater protection for the sea turtles."

Hippo war victims: One of the world's largest hippo populations, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Virunga National Park has dropped from 29,000 to 1,300 in less than three decades as "poachers and armed factions kill them for their meat and teeth" says Planet Ark, Reuters 9/2//03. Conservationists hope that a recent peace agreement ending the nation's four-year civil war will allow the government to better "protect the rare mountain gorilla also found in the park, and halt the slaughter of hippos 'in shocking numbers' as demand for their teeth increased in the illegal ivory trade."

Poachers wipe out Kamchatka grizzlies.  Firing from a helicopter, poachers killed all of the 20 to 40 grizzly bears on Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula ending the study conducted by the Canadian team of Maureen Enns and Charlie Russell who had been studying the bears since 1995.  Poachers had previously killed all the tigers in the region and continue to poach sturgeon and salmon.  The research is documented in a PBS documentary: Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia and the book Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka.

Conservation = killing. "Despite dry habitat conditions and a warm winter in 2002 that may have contributed to a reduced harvest, it is encouraging that the total number of waterfowl hunting days remained strong," said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Williams. "We will continue to work with states and flyway councils to provide migratory bird hunting opportunities as part of our conservation (sic!) mission.

Mute swan killing stopped by Fund for Animals lawsuit.  Permits to kill thousands of non-native mute swans have been rescinded.  The swans were blamed for destroying aquatic vegetation, which the Fund claimed was instead being harmed by industrial wastes, particularly effluent from chicken factory farms.

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