Following Legal Victory for Maine Lobstermen’s Association, State Receives $17 Million from NOAA to Improve Data on Right Whale
This federal funding comes just months after the federal court of appeals ruled in favor of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) in their lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — a subagency of NOAA — for adopting improperly-founded regulations against the industry. In September of 2021, the MLA filed a lawsuit against the agency alleging that their efforts to protect the NARW were unlawful, as the regulations promulgated were founded upon a “simplistic and false premise” that “exaggerates and arbitrarily inflates the risk posed by the Maine lobster fishery.” The MLA stated that the NOAA’s analyses was “unlawful” as they “did not rely on the best available scientific information, made erroneous and arbitrary assumptions unsupported and contradicted by data and evidence, relied on an outdated and flawed methodology to model projections of the North Atlantic right whale population, and inexplicably failed to account for either the positive impact of mitigation measures already or soon-to-be employed by the Maine lobster fishery.” more, >>click to read<< 07:09
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