Endangered whale protections may be delayed to 2035 under Trump-backed plan

A pair of North Atlantic right whales interact at the surface of Cape Cod Bay, March 27, 2023, in Massachusetts.

PORTLAND, Maine — For roughly 380 right whales left in the North Atlantic, which can die after getting tangled in fishing ropes or hit by ships, the Trump administration said this month it wants to delay new protections by almost a decade in favor of commercial fishing interests.

The sleek black whales, which weigh as much as a midsized bulldozer, are critically endangered and their numbers have declined sharply in recent decades. Environmental groups say reducing deaths and injuries caused by people is essential to the species’ recovery.

The whales give birth off Florida and Georgia before making a long migration north to feed off New England and Canada. Protected areas of ocean aid them on their journey, but scientists have said they have strayed from those zones in recent years in search of food as the oceans have warmed.

A proposal by U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine, would push back new federal protections for right whales to 2035, and allow time to craft regulations that are less burdensome to the fishing industry. The White House released a memo Friday saying it “strongly supports” the plan and that President Donald Trump’s senior advisors would recommend he sign it into law if it passes Congress.

The proposal comes as the government already paused any new federal rules about right whales until 2028.

According to Golden, Maine’s iconic lobster industry would’ve been crushed by the now-paused regulations, which he said were “based on flawed science and hypothetical scenarios rather than the reality on the water.”

A longer delay would give the government time to “get the science right” about threats to whales, Golden said in a statement Friday.

The U.S. lobster and crab fishing industries are worth hundreds of millions of dollars at the docks.

“This legislation is critical to ensuring the long-term stability of American fisheries for generations to come,” said John Drouin, vice president of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association.

Environmental groups like California-based In Defense of Animals have pushed back against efforts to weaken whale protections. They cite how the whales’ population fell by about a quarter from 2010 to 2020, and recent years of recovery have been slow.

Some signs about the whale’s population have been encouraging. This year’s birthing season produced 23 mother-calf pairs, the most since 2009, the New England Aquarium said in a statement.

The whale, which has been federally protected for more than 50 years, remains critically endangered, the aquarium said. They were once abundant off the East Coast, but they were decimated during the era of commercial whaling.

Patrick Whittle, The Associated Press