Alaska judge rejects critical habitat designation for threatened bearded and ringed seals

A judge in Alaska has set aside a federal agency's action designating an area the size of Texas as critical habitat for two species of threatened Arctic Alaska seals.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason found the National Marine Fisheries Service did not explain why the entire 70-million-hectare area — which included waters extending from St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to the edge of Canadian waters in the Arctic — was "indispensable" to the recovery of the ringed and bearded seal populations. 

Gleason said the agency "abused its discretion" by not considering any protected areas to exclude or how other nations are conserving both seal populations, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

She vacated the critical habitat designation and sent the matter back to the agency for further work.

The decision came in a lawsuit brought by the state of Alaska, which claimed the 2022 designation was overly broad and could hamper oil and gas development in the Arctic and shipping to North Slope communities.

Julie Fair, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the agency was reviewing the decision.

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor 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 statement. "They identify an area or activity they wish to restrict, and they declare it unusable under the guise of conservation or preservation."

Bearded and ringed seals give birth and rear their pups on the ice. They were listed as threatened in 2012 amid concerns with anticipated sea ice declines in the coming decades. The state, North Slope Borough and oil industry groups challenged the threatened species designation, but the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear that case. 

Gleason said the Endangered Species Act bars actions from being authorized if they would likely jeopardize a threatened species. Given that, "an interim change" vacating the critical habitat designation would not be so disruptive, she said.