July 7, 2013 — A conservation group will ask the federal government Monday to list 81 additional marine species under the Endangered Species Act, seeking to protect sharks, corals and other sea life and begin correcting what it considers a bias toward safeguarding terrestrial creatures.
Of the 1,475 U.S. species protected by the landmark 40-year-old law, only 94 live in the oceans. The conservation group WildEarth Guardians contends there is no scientific basis for that disparity.
“It’s just an historic imbalance that needs to be righted,” said Bethany Cotton, wildlife program director for the organization, which is based in Santa Fe, N.M. With most efforts to protect species started by groups and individuals, the overwhelming majority of species listed have been the ones people can see — land- and river-based wildlife, predominantly in the West, she said.
The marine exceptions to that have been “really charismatic mega-fauna,” such as whales and dolphins, Cotton said, as well as some turtles, seals and salmon.
Experts not associated with the organization offered other explanations. “There are two factors that explain why there is such an imbalance,” said Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University. “People have had this idea for way too long that the seas are so vast and limitless that nothing we could ever do could hurt them,” she said. “It’s hard to shake that.”
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