Opposition Grows Over Critical Habitat Plan for Endangered Rice’s Whale Amid Job Concerns in Gulf States

John Ososky, a marine mammal collections specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, has discovered a new species called the Rice’s whale, one of the world’s most endangered species. The discovery was made after a whale beached in 2019 in the Florida Everglades and led to Ososki’s efforts to preserve the animal. The new species was named in honor of a late marine biologist. However, opposition to NOAA’s plan to set aside more than 28,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico as critical habitat for the whale has sparked opposition from the oil and gas industry and its allies in Congress. Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee approved a bill to slow down the plan, fearing it would result in the loss of thousands of jobs in Louisiana and other Gulf states. Critics of the new habitat area argue that it’s desperately needed to protect an endangered species that is the only year-round baleen whale in the Gulf.