Marine Mammal Protection Act Under Threat
With overwhelming public support, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was signed into law by Richard Nixon on October 21, 1972. This landmark legislation marked a turning point in marine conservation, establishing comprehensive protections for whales, dolphins, manatees, sea otters, seals, sea lions, walruses, and polar bears within U.S. waters.
The MMPA was groundbreaking in its adoption of an ecosystem-based approach to wildlife conservation, making it the first law of its kind in the world with its central aim to maintain sustainable populations of marine mammals in relation to the health and capacity of their habitats. The Act not only brought an end to commercial whaling in the U.S., but also laid the foundation for the recovery of numerous species once teetering on the brink of collapse.
Thanks to the MMPA, no marine mammal species have gone extinct in U.S. waters since the law was enacted. In fact, many populations have made remarkable recoveries, including humpback whales, gray whales, gray seals, and California sea lions. When the MMPA was passed, humpback whale numbers had plummeted by 95%, with only a few thousand remaining. Today, their populations have grown significantly – approximately 13,000 in the North Atlantic and around 21,000 in the North Pacific.
Despite this amazing recovery, like most marine mammals, humpback whales still face serious threats. Climate change is perhaps the most significant medium-term threat as rising ocean temperatures disrupt their food sources. But there are other day-to-day impacts that are causing problems such as entanglement in fishing gear, vessel strikes, vessel harassment, and underwater noise take their toll.
Today, however, this critical legislation faces serious threats as a draft MMPA reauthorization bill was introduced by Rep. Nicholas Begich (R-AK) in early July. The proposed Act reauthorization would –
- Downgrade the statute’s mandate from healthy populations to mere survival
- Weaken the legal standards for authorizing activities that kill and injure marine mammals
- Eliminate protections from commercial fishing
- Hamstring the ability to issue any new regulations under the Act
- Drastically undermine marine mammal conservation
- Delay action (10 years) to save the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale
The MMPA has been a major success and is essential to safeguarding the future of marine mammals and the ecosystems they call home.
Bats in Eastern Washington
Bats are experiencing severe declines, with 90% of species affected and 53% at risk of extinction within 15 years, making them one of the most threatened vertebrate groups in North America. Bats are extremely important ecologically as they provide major ecological benefits including insect control, pollination, and seed dispersal. Over the last two growing seasons, CBI scientist Dr. Chris Cosma has been monitoring bats and nocturnal flying insects in Douglas County, Washington in order to better understand how different landscape conditions impact bat species richness and abundance. Funded by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Chris used the latest acoustic monitoring technology to survey bats and camera traps to evaluate their prey base – primarily moths.
He surveyed sites that represented a gradient of surrounding land types—active cropland, cropland under restoration via the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and regional protected areas. Using generalized linear mixed-effects models, he analyzed how bat activity, species richness, diversity, and feeding behavior was influenced by environmental variables including climate, land cover, water features, and nocturnal flying insect abundance.
KEY FINDINGS
All 14 bat species native to the region, including at-risk species like Townsend’s big-eared bat, were detected during the study. Temperature was identified as the strongest environmental factor influencing bat activity, with both nightly fluctuations and long-term minimum temperatures significantly predicting bat diversity, activity levels, and foraging intensity. While nocturnal insect abundance had a smaller effect, it still showed a significant influence on bat feeding behavior, particularly at finer temporal scales.
Agricultural practices had mixed effects on bat communities. Areas with insect-pollinated crops and greater crop diversity within a 2–5 km radius played a key role in supporting vulnerable and rare species like Towsend’s big-eared bat. The USDA Conservation Reserve Program-enrolled lands, however, showed consistent negative associations with bat activity, diversity, and foraging. These lands are currently in early stages of restoration.
Management implications
These findings show that diverse bat communities play a key role in eastern Washington’s agricultural landscapes. Bats were more active in areas with diverse insect-pollinated crops, suggesting that diversified farming provides better foraging habitat than simplified, wind-pollinated systems. Protecting and expanding areas with water sources is also essential for bat conservation.
New Landscape Intactness Assessment for California
In 2016, the California Energy Commission funded CBI to conduct an advanced landscape condition analysis, intended to use as a foundation for evaluating ecosystems, species habitats, and areas designated for renewable energy development. The resulting product was integrated into several statewide planning efforts, including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP 2017 Assessment) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP 2025 Update).
CBI’s modeling approach synthesizes complex spatial data into a suite of metrics that quantify terrestrial intactness—an estimate of naturalness or the degree of human disturbance—through a multidimensional lens. The resulting interactive product allows for identification of natural areas that maintain higher levels of ecosystem integrity, thus maximizing support of wildlife and ecosystem services. It also highlights key factors influencing the State’s landscape condition, such as infrastructure and urban development, and supports a deeper understanding of the wide range of human impacts occurring along that continuum.
In 2024, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) funded an update to produce a new version of this terrestrial intactness product, incorporating significant improvements in data quality and the inclusion of some new inputs such as invasive vegetation and habitat fragmentation metrics. The analysis provides a present-day estimate of the degree to which California’s natural landscapes have been impacted by human disturbance and the drivers at play in any given location.
The 2025 version has been crafted with an eye towards incorporating data derived from more advanced methods, likely to be updated at regular intervals, thus setting the stage for products more directly comparable across time. The current upgrades and advancements in the analytical model provide a solid foundation for future work – such as finer resolution models that would offer additional detail needed to address certain planning and management issues by agencies, NGOs, and others
