Loons Go To Court- NRDC Lawsuit for Alaskan Yellow-Billed Loons

The National Resources Defense Council heads to court soon as a part of the latest struggle in their massive campaign to protect the unusual yellow-billed loon and its habitat: the Arctic.

NRDC’s members and activists mobilized repeatedly against the Bush Administration’s ongoing push to lease vast stretches of the bird’s fragile nesting grounds in the Western Arctic Reserve for destructive oil and gas drilling. With Alaska’s population of yellow-billed loons hovering at around 3,700, the lawsuit aims to force the Bush Administration to reach a decision — more than two years overdue — on whether to protect these vulnerable birds under the Endangered Species Act.

Population numbers for the yellow-billed loon are low and extremely vulnerable. Most of the Alaskan breeding population — and 18 percent of the global population — lives within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. In January 2004, the Bush administration opened nearly 9 million acres of the northwest portion of the reserve to oil and gas development. This area was originally set aside as important wildlife habitat. The quest to place these birds on the Endagered Species Act is important not only for the loons themselves, but also for the entire ecology of their habitat, where countless other animals would be protected as a result.

Borrowed Earth maintains its stance that drilling for oil in ANWR would not only severely and irreparably damage the ecosytem, its wildlife, and the people dependent on it, but would only back-track the US in its search for sustainable aternative energy.

For more information on the yellow-billed loon campaign, visit http://www.nrdc.org/.