This report appeared in the Whidbey Audubon newsletter of May 2002,
based on an article in the Air Force Times of April 8, 2002:

In a March 13 ruling, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia ruled the Navy has violated the Migratory
Bird Treaty Act in using a small Pacific island in the Northern
Marianas chain for target practice because the training is killing
birds without a permit.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prevents the slaughter of entire flocks
for profit. The killing of migrating birds, including ducks and geese,
is allowed by permit. Because the military goes out of its way not to
harm the birds, the law has no provision for issuing permits to the
military for birds killed accidentally during training. The Navy tried,
and failed, to get a permit in 1996.

The suit was filed in December, 2000 by the 5,000-member Center for
Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz., and by Ralph Frew, a resident of
Guam and former president of the Northern Marianas Islands Audubon
Society. Frew claimed he suffered harm because the killings denied him
the chance to see the birds.

Navy officials unsuccessfully argued that their training actually helps
rather than hurts the birds because the bombing of the island and the
presence of unexploded ordnance keep people and any other possible
predators away.

The birds inhabiting the 206-acre island of mostly volcanic rock are
the rare but not endangered brown, masked and red-footed boobies,
frigate birds, brown and black noddies and fairy terns, as well as the
endangered, flightless (sic) Micronesian megapode. But the Navy is
allowed to harm the megapode under an authorization from the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.

Government lawyers also argued that Frew and other birders are not
suffering major injury because the killing of a few birds makes the
sighting of surviving ones more special.

That argument is "frivolous," said Judge Sullivan in his ruling. "There
is absolutely no support in the law for the view that environmentalists
should be getting enjoyment out of the destruction of natural resources
because that destruction makes the remaining resources more scarce and
therefore valuable."

Cheryl Bradkin
Coupeville WA
bradkin at whidbey.net
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 2291 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20040916/67786fb6/attachment.bin