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WESTERN ARCTIC GETS REPRIEVE
NRDC and our partners have scored a major courtroom victory for Arctic wildlife. In late September, a federal judge blocked the Bush administration from proceeding with oil and gas development in more than 1 million acres in the Western Arctic Reserve, including a pristine nesting area for migratory birds and the calving grounds for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd.
The court ruled that the Interior Department failed to consider the cumulative environmental impacts of oil and gas drilling on this sensitive ecosystem. In tandem with our courtroom campaign, BioGems Defenders have sent more than 100,000 messages urging the Bush administration and Congress to uphold protections for important habitat areas within the reserve.
COURT UPHOLDS STRICT LIMITS ON DEADLY SONAR
A federal appeals court has rejected the Bush administration's attempt to turn back a landmark NRDC courtroom win that limits the peacetime deployment of a powerful low-frequency active sonar system. According to the Navy's own studies, the LFA sonar system generates noise so intense that dangerous levels of sound travel more than 300 miles -- posing a deadly threat to whole populations of whales and other marine mammals that depend on their hearing to survive.
Three years ago, a lower federal court sided with NRDC and our partners and ruled that the Navy's plan to deploy this powerful new sonar system across 75 percent of the world's oceans violated a host of federal laws. In the wake of the appeal court's decision, the Navy must continue to adhere to an agreement with NRDC, which limits LFA testing and training to an area in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
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