Secretary of Defense/former CIA Director backed MLPA Initiative

by Dan Bacher

California’s privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, opposed by fishermen, grassroots conservationists, environmental justice advocates and supporters of democracy and transparency in government, has “friends in high places.”

Leon Panetta, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and President Barack Obama’s current Secretary of Defense, has been a huge supporter of the corrupt MLPA Initiative.

On August 30, 2008, prior to his appointment as CIA Director, Panetta wrote an editorial, “Protect Our Oceans,” in the Silicon Valley Mercury-News that touted the “marine protected areas” created under the MLPA process.

“California has always been on the cutting edge of policy protecting our coastline and ocean,” wrote Panetta. “In 1999, an unprecedented state law, the Marine Life Protection Act, required the creation of marine protected areas down California’s coastline. These areas are vital to restoring a sustainable fishery. Californians are forging ahead to create marine-protected areas through an inclusive, regional public process that involves sport and commercial fishermen, marine scientists, conservationists, divers, kayakers and educators.”

“In California alone, our ocean supports a $42 billion economy, dependent on the health of fish and wildlife, tourism and recreation. It is crucial to our health, our nutrition, our economy and our spirit. President Kennedy once said that the oceans are the ’salt in our veins.’ By protecting our oceans, we will protect life itself,” Panetta concluded.

The words from Panetta, who served as chair of the Pew (Sunoco Oil Company) Oceans Commission, could have come right out of an MLPA Initiative, DFG or corporate environmental NGO news release.

It is no surprise that the controversial “marine protected areas” that Panetta gushed about don’t protect the oceans and “life itself” from the impacts of military testing, pollution, oil spills and drilling, wind and wave energy projects and all other human impacts other than fishing.

After being appointed as Defense Secretary by Obama last summer, Panetta has been pursuing al Qaeda, waging multiple  wars, urging global support for tough economic sanctions against Iran – and gearing up for military exercises off the West Coast that threaten marine mammals and the ocean ecosystem.

As a Congressman in the 1980s and 1990s, Panetta voted against U.S. military intervention in different countries, but he has become a “hawk” in recent years.

“Some of the wars that I voted against, I didn’t think that that was — you know, that they were not — they did not make the case,” Panetta told the New York Times on October 24, 2011. “But after 9/11, there was no question in my mind that we were dealing with a group that attacked America, killed a lot of Americans, and that it was important for us to take action.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/us/leon-panetta-in-his-own-words.html)

Who supports the MLPA besides Former CIA Director and current Secretary of Defense Panetta? The corrupt process, touted as “open, transparent and inclusive” by Wall Street environmentalists, is backed by “green” organizations and corporations such as the Western States Petroleum Association, Safeway Stores, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart) and the shadowy Resources Legacy Foundation.

The so-called “marine protected areas” that went into effect in Southern California on January 1, 2001 were created under the “visionary leadership” of Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum and chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast. Now that fishermen have been kicked off large areas of the South Coast, Reheis-Boyd has been relentlessly lobbying for new oil drilling off the California coast, the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the evisceration of environmental laws. Could there be an agenda at work here?

Apparently, it’s OK for the military to conduct exercises in and around “marine protected areas” and for cities, agribusiness and the oil industry to pollute, but it’s not OK for a person to catch and release fish from a kayak or a mother and father to take their children fishing in these bizarre parodies of “marine protected areas.”

The failure of the MLPA Initiative to comprehensively protect California marine waters occurs at a time when the military is planning to expand its training exercises in West Coast waters. A broad coalition of conservation and tribal organizations on January 26 sued the Obama administration for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Earthjustice, representing the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the San Juans, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and People For Puget Sound, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s approval of the Navy’s training activities in its Northwest Training Range Complex.

“These training exercises will harm dozens of protected species of marine mammals—southern resident killer whales, blue whales, humpback whales, dolphins, and porpoises—through the use of high-intensity mid-frequency sonar,” said Steve Mashuda, an Earthjustice attorney representing the groups. “The Fisheries Service fell down on the job and failed to require the Navy to take reasonable and effective actions to protect them.” (http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/30/groups-sue-over-navy-sonar-impacts-on-marine-mammals-94811) 

One of the reasons why this and similar lawsuits are so necessary is because the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative creates so-called “marine protected areas” that fail to protect the ocean from military testing and all other human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering. 

“If Defense Secretary Panetta really is concerned about the health of the ocean and people, he should order a halt to destructive military tests in the ocean, help us keep fisheries open to sustainable ocean food providers, and join the world outcry for peace conversion,” said John Lewallen, North Coast environmental leader, co-founder of the Ocean Protection Coalition and North Coast Seaweed Rebellion and independent candidate for U.S. Congress in California’s Second Congressional District.

Ironically, a survey boat mapping the sea floor for the MLPA Initiative, supposedly a process to protect marine life, struck and killed an endangered blue whale off Fort Bragg in October 2009, outraging fishermen, tribal members and environmentalists.

The California State Lands Commission (SLC) that December found that Fugro Pelagos, the company contracted to conduct the survey, violated the terms of its permit when it struck the whale.  The company didn’t notify the State Lands Commission prior to its survey activity and failed to have marine wildlife observers on board, as required. (http://yubanet.com/california/Dan-Bacher-The-Whalegate-Scandal.php)  

There is no doubt that the MLPA Initiative is corporate/oil industry/military greenwashing at its very worst.