Ear-splitting military sonar is needlessly threatening whales and other marine mammals throughout the world's oceans. Yet the U.S. Navy has resisted legal requirements to put safeguards in place during testing and training that would protect marine animals from avoidable injury and death. In response to this dangerous breach of our bedrock environmental laws, NRDC is waging a campaign of courtroom action and public pressure to compel the Navy to restrict its use of deadly sonar.

High-intensity sonar blasts whales with noise billions of times more intense than levels known to disturb them and can cause their internal organs to hemorrhage. Scientists have linked the use of mid-frequency military sonar to hundreds of whale strandings and deaths around the world, in areas such as North Carolina, the Bahamas, Greece, the Canary Islands and Japan. Such sonar can also interfere with a whale's hearing, affecting its ability to navigate, avoid predators, find food, care for its young and, ultimately, survive.

NRDC's campaign to rein in deadly sonar took a major step forward in February 2008, when a federal judge struck down a waiver issued by the White House that would have exempted the U.S. Navy from obeying a key environmental law during sonar training exercises that endanger whales. The waiver was a last-ditch attempt to let the Navy unleash an onslaught of military sonar off the coast of southern California -- home to five endangered species of whales -- without taking precautions to protect marine mammals from a lethal bombardment of sound. In response to a lawsuit filed by NRDC, the same court had recently ordered the Navy to put far-reaching safeguards in place during the sonar maneuvers to protect marine mammals.

NRDC is waging a separate battle in federal court to force the Navy to take humane precautions when training with mid-frequency sonar throughout U.S. waters. This ongoing legal action, filed in October 2005, could take years to win in court, and we are counting on BioGems Defenders for urgently needed financial support. Your donation will also enable us to get the damning facts about mid-frequency sonar out to millions of Americans through a variety of means, including a compelling video, narrated by Pierce Brosnan.

NRDC BioGems Defenders and other online activists have sent hundreds of thousands of messages since 2001 urging the Navy to limit its use of deadly sonar.  Please take action now and help keep up the pressure on the Navy.

NRDC Trustee and singer/songwriter James Taylor is spearheading a campaign to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale from a sonar testing range that the Navy is planning to build off the coast of North Carolina. You can read James' message and speak out in opposition at the NRDC Action Fund website: http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/james-taylor-letter.html

In addition to helping to protect whales from deadly sonar, we are currently campaigning to save the whale habitats of Alaska's Western Arctic Reserve, Mexico's Upper Gulf of California and Alacran Reef, Chile's Patagonia Coast and the Hawaiian Islands -- and the migratory routes that connect them.

And BioGems Defenders have joined NRDC and our Mexican partners in a race to safeguard the world's last unspoiled gray whale sanctuary in Mexico's Laguna San Ignacio by buying up the surrounding development rights (click here to learn more).

Photo credits: Top, beached pilot whales in Tasmania © Jason South, Fairfax Photos; Bottom right, slideshow: gray whale: © 2004 Norbert Wu; Slideshow photos: beaked whale: © Center for Whale Research; humpback whale: © Brandon Cole; melon-headed whales: © Doug Perrine/SeaPics.com; orca: © Ingrid Visser/SeaPics.com; sperm whales: © Brandon Cole; blue whale: © Phillip Colla.