Rare Right Whales Fight With The Oil & Gas Industry

Scientists are hunting this summer for one of the most precariously positioned animals on the planet _ Pacific right whales. The whales, once prized by commercial whalers, have been teetering on extinction for decades. The search for the slow-moving behemoths is being prompted by the search for a less rare but increasingly valuable commodity _ oil and gas in the Bering Sea. The problem is that the area where the whales have shown up in surprising numbers in recent years overlaps an area the federal government earlier this year approved for oil and gas development. Lease sales in the southeastern Bering Sea are proposed for 2011. It is an unfortunate juxtaposition, said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which is fighting the federal government's five-year oil and gas development plan for the Bering Sea. He said that it is no surprise that the U.S. Minerals Management Service is funding the whale survey...