Threats to whales around the world are escalating, as the use of deadly military sonar spreads through the oceans and industrialization despoils critical whale habitat. In Alaska’s Cook Inlet, the beluga whale population has plummeted to only 375 animals as pollution increases. And ear-splitting military sonar is needlessly harming populations of whales as the U.S. Navy continues to refuse to use common-sense safeguards during training exercises.

NRDC is fighting on all fronts to protect imperiled whales throughout the world’s oceans. In 2008, under pressure from NRDC and other conservation groups, the National Marine Fisheries Service placed Cook Inlet belugas on the endangered species list. However, the state of Alaska -- in a move to protect oil and gas interests -- intends to challenge this decision. NRDC will go to court to protect Alaska’s most endangered whales.

NRDC is also waging a campaign of courtroom action, administrative advocacy and public pressure to compel the Navy to restrict its use of deadly sonar, which has been linked to hundreds of whale strandings and deaths around the world. NRDC has made enormous progress over the past decade in compelling the military to study the impacts of sonar and put precautions in place. But a set of eleventh-hour rules adopted by the Bush Administration would allow the Navy to harm whales more than 2 million times each year along the eastern seaboard, the Gulf of Mexico, California, and Hawaii. We are asking the new administration to revisit those rules and will continue to push for reasonable safeguards to ensure the Navy conducts sonar training in an environmentally responsible manner -- so that whales don’t have to die for practice.