Dan "Get your hand off my ass" Sullivan cut necessary city programs to save money to hire a lawyer in legal battle against whales.

(I would like it to be noted that I really thought before using this picture. But when I googled Mayor Sullivan, guess which picture popped up? What can I say? It is the iconic Mayor Dan Sullivan picture.)

Mayor Dan Sullivan has hired a Seattle attorney to help the city negotiate the way through a pending federal designation of critical habitat for Cook Inlet's beluga whales.

Federal scientists say Cook Inlet's belugas are a genetically distinct species that doesn't intermingle with other beluga populations in Alaska. The Inlet's whales were estimated to number about 1,300 in the early 1980s, but the population plummeted to around 350 in the late 1990s.

Scientists blamed the drop on subsistence hunts, but Native hunters voluntarily curtailed their harvests in 1999 and the population hasn't rebounded as biologists had hoped. The fisheries service listed the whales as endangered in 2008, and a few weeks ago proposed designating more than 3,000 square miles of Cook Inlet as critical habitat for the whales. That area would comprise all of upper Cook Inlet, the coastal areas of western Cook Inlet and most of Kachemak Bay.

I have spent many a wonderful evening in Anchorage down by Point Woronzof watching the Belugas frolic in the Inlet. It is a very peaceful experience.

I especially remember taking a two year old girl, whose family my wife was a nanny for, and watching her face light up as she watched the white shapes popping to the surface before slipping back under the murky waves. "Uga's! Uga's!" She exclaimed and giggled every time she spotted one.

How can anybody who has watched these amazing creatures NOT want to protect their fragile habitat?

Sullivan announced Stelle's hiring during a noon luncheon with Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Dave Carey and Talis Colberg, mayor of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. All three mayors said the critical habitat designation could have big negative effects on government projects and activities in and near the Inlet, as well as fisheries and oil and gas development. They said they want to present a united front to oppose it and limit its effects.

Gee who knew the Three Stooges could be so evil?

Sullivan and Carey, especially, said they want the state to pay for what Sullivan estimated would be "several millions of dollars" of new science research on the whales. That work couldn't be done in time to help much with the debate over what areas should be designated critical habitat, but would be useful in future lawsuits, Sullivan acknowledged.

So let me see if I have this straight. The science, done by the Federal scientists, is not the kind of science that these guys like. So they want to pay millions of dollars to hire their own "scientists" to conduct the kind of "science" that one gets, when one is willing to pay millions of dollars, in order to continue treating Cook Inlet like a giant toilet bowl? (Yes in Anchorage our shit literally gets dumped right into the Inlet.)

Supporters of the designation say it wouldn't cripple development in Cook Inlet, but would require it to be done more responsibly. Science studies and monitoring already have shown the Inlet's belugas need the endangered species listing and its protection, they say.

The mayor's office said Stelle's firm, K&L Gates, has an Anchorage office and is already retained under a $50,000 contract with the city's legal department. The cost of paying for Stelle's time under that contract likely will be shared by city agencies most likely to be affected by the designation, including the Port of Anchorage, the water and wastewater utility, solid waste services and project management and engineering, Sullivan's aides said.

Gee what a competent mayor we have. Apparently our city is so broke that he felt he had to cut $175,000 from our libraries and arts programs, but not so broke that he cannot justify providing a $50,000 retainer for lawyer to fight for the right to continue dumping toxic substances and raw sewage into the habitat of these beautiful creatures.



"You better lawyer up, Moby! Mayor Dan "We don't need no stinking libraries" Sullivan is taking your ass to court!"

When is the next election?

The biggest danger to the Beluga whales of Cook Inlet is not predation, or lack of food. No it is Governor Lipsticked Pitbull herself, Sarah Palin.

Palin's old-school approach to wildlife management is legendary. Despite her incongruous penchant for sporting a polar bear pin, the governor's antipathy for federal protections for the polar bear has led her administration to sue the federal government over the bear's threatened status. Palin's gruesome policy of supporting aerial hunting of wolves is so infamous that Defenders of Wildlife has launched an entire "Eye on Palin" campaign, starring actress Ashley Judd. The site has prompted the governor to denounce the venerable environmental organization as an "extreme fringe group." Now, new federal protections to protect the belugas of Cook Inlet are Palin's latest target.

(One can almost imagine Palin's own little Alaskan animal checklist. "Let's see fight to keep Polar Bears off of the Endangered Species List, check. Increase predator control by allowing both wolves and bears to be shot from airplanes, check. Now sue to keep Beluga Whales off of the Endangered Species List as well, double check.)

On Jan. 14, 2009, the Alaska governor announced that the state had filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the federal government for protecting the whales, arguing that Alaska is already doing enough for the whales in the Inlet. Palin's chief of staff published an Op-Ed in the Anchorage Daily News on Jan. 28 titled "Protection Requirements for Cook Inlet Belugas Are Silly."

While there are five stocks of beluga whales in waters near Alaska, the ones in Cook Inlet are isolated and genetically distinct from their cousins. That population has declined dramatically since the 1980s, from over 1,000 to about 375 now. More than 300 whales perished in one four-year stretch (1994 to 1998) alone, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Marine mammal biologists and conservationists were hopeful that sharply limiting subsistence hunting of the whales by native Alaskans would see the whales bounce back. But despite only five whales being killed by hunting since 1999, when new regulations went into effect, the whales have not rebounded.

Even the Bush administration took note of the Cook Inlet belugas' decline, after being pressured by environmental groups. In October 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced the listing of the Cook Inlet population of beluga whales as a full-fledged endangered species. Yes, the Bush administration, infamous for its disdain for science when it came to protecting endangered critters, saw fit to offer protections to the belugas living in Cook Inlet. But not the Palin administration.

"It's hard to imagine that anyone could be more anti-environmental than Bush, but Palin is Exhibit A," says Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "Here we had the most anti-environmental administration in U.S. history, and Palin still feels compelled to sue over one of the few environmentally positive things to come out of that administration."

(Wow! Essentially Sarah Palin is "more Bush then Bush". Doesn't THAT make the hairs on the back of your neck stick straight up?)

That's what's got the Palin administration's goat. "The fear is that the Endangered Species Act listing of the beluga will lead to regulation of essentially unfettered industrial activity in Cook Inlet," explains Cummings. Today in Cook Inlet, the oil industry is still allowed to dump its toxic waste into areas with fisheries. That seemingly outrageous practice is grandfathered into law because the industry's activities predated the Clean Water Act of 1972. "Cook Inlet remains in this kind of 1950s regulatory backwater," says Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inlet Keeper, a nonprofit advocacy group working to protect the watershed.

So let's be clear, Palin wants to keep the Belugas off of the Endangered Species List so that the oil companies can continue to dump toxic waste into the Cook Inlet where local salmon can ingest it before they are caught by Anchorage fisherman and then fed to their trusting families. Is this yet another example of Sarah Palin putting the "needs of Alaskans first"?

Is it too much to hope that Sarah Palin gets chased by a wolf into the Cook Inlet where she is carried by a Beluga Whale and delivered to the ravenous jaws of a Polar Bear who then devours her, lipstick and all? Yeah I guess that would be asking a little too much.