Biden administration blasted for ‘hypocrisy’ on offshore wind as it scrambles to probe whale deaths

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Biden administration blasted for ‘hypocrisy’ on offshore wind as it scrambles to probe whale deaths

By Brianna Herlihy, Fox News
August 2, 2023

The Biden administration appears to be scrambling for research on the conflict between wind turbines and a highly endangered whale species on the East Coast following reports of “unprecedented” whale deaths.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a regulatory body from the Department of Interior that leases offshore areas for energy development, posted a grant notice in May targeted at “addressing key information gaps in acoustic ecology of the North Atlantic Right Whales,” one of the most endangered whale species in the world.

The problem is the government has already approved offshore wind projects, and some experts are saying the attention to the whales is too little too late.

Fishermen in the region are calling the government “hypocritical” after the same federal agencies almost “regulated [them] completely out of business” in an effort to protect the endangered species without any data showing fishermen bring any harm to the right whale.

BOEM’s grant notice states, “In support of the rapid development of offshore wind (OSW) on the Atlantic OCS, the Environmental Studies Program (ESP) has identified a priority need to address knowledge gaps in the acoustic behavior of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales (NARW).”

“The overall goal of this cooperative agreement is to observe and describe acoustic behavior of NARW where significant data gaps in call rates exist and convey information about the context in which the acoustic behaviors are observed.”

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/biden-administration-blasted-for-hypocrisy-on-offshore-wind-as-it-scrambles-to-probe-whale-deaths/