Environment Archives - Page 61 of 107

Controversial Olympic Peninsula Timber Sale Pits Environment Against Education

The marbled murrelet, a federally protected seabird that nests in the coastal forests of Washington, Oregon and Northern California. | credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

By Ashley Ahearn, KUOW

SEATTLE — The Washington Board of Natural Resources voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the sale of 200 acres of the Olympic Peninsula that are home to the threatened marbled murrelet. The money from the timber sale will go to the University of Washington.

200 acres might not seem like that big of a deal, but not if you ask Peter Goldman, director of the Washington Forest Law Center.

“These 200 acres are extremely important,” he said. “These lands around these timber sales are heavily used and officially mapped as occupied by the marbled murrelet.”

Goldman was referring to a rare seabird whose numbers have plummetted to the point that it’s listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. It nests in old-growth coastal forests of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and California.

Goldman is working with several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Seattle Audubon Society, and Olympic Forest Coalition, who oppose the timber sale because it will mean clearcutting in murrelet habitat. The tracts are known as the “Goodmint” and “Rainbow Rock” timber sales, and are located on the western part of the Olympic Peninsula.

There are roughly 2,000 murrelets left in Washington and the population has been declining by up to 8 percent each year over the past decade. The birds can fly upwards of 50 miles to forage the ocean for food. For timber cutters and marbled murrelet alike, coastal forests on the Olympic Peninsula are highly desirable, and harder to come by.

Last year the University of Washington received $1.35 million from timber sales on state lands, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

“So the question,” Goldman says, “is whether the University of Washington is really saying they want to log the last remaining habitat for the marbled murrelet for approximately $600,000.”

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for the University of Washington said: “This is the Department of Natural Resource’s decision. Some people may disagree but it is their call.”

Tom DeLuca, the director of the University of Washington’s school of Environmental and Forest Sciences, is the vice chairman of the state Board of Natural Resources, which makes decisions about timber sales. DeLuca did not vote on this particular sale and did not respond to requests for an interview.

Peter Goldmark (not Goldman) is the chairman of that board, and the commissioner of public lands for the state of Washington.

“The opponents make an emotional issue that these are the last acres available when in fact they’re not,” Commissioner Goldmark said.

These 200 acres may not be the last remaining marbled murrelet habitat but they’re part of it.

In a report released in 2008, the Department of Natural Resources identified key habitat that should be protected for marbled murrelet throughout the state. The 200 acres that are now up for sale were included in that report.

When asked about the report, Goldmark downplayed the findings.

“This is a science team report only,” he said. “It’s not proposed as a plan because, first and foremost, our major responsibility is a fiduciary interest to supply revenue for the trust beneficiaries.”

Goldmark added that the DNR has refrained from logging on thousands of acres elsewhere in the area, at a significant cost to those “trust beneficiaries” — like the University of Washington, Washington State University and public schools throughout the state, which received almost $175 millionfrom timber sales last year.

The 200 acres will be put up for sale in April. Environmental groups have indicated they will to file a lawsuit in the next 30 days.

Where the land and water meet: new study pinpoints the essential role of wetlands

Estuary_photo — Quilceda marsh, currently owned by The Tulalip Tribes, looking southwest down Steamboat Slough of the Snohomish River toward Port Gardner, Wa.
Photo by K. O’Connell 2013

By Monica Brown Tulalip News Writer

TULALIP, WA-Wetlands are widely agreed to be some of the most beautiful places on Earth, with an array of wild and plant life that spark joy in the hearts of many.

“For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.” -Sandra Postel, founder and director of Global Water and Policy Project, author of “Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity”, 2003.

Wetlands can be considered the hub of life, where land and water meet you will find an overabundance of life flourishing. Currently most wetlands are threatened with rising sea levels, pollutants and development.

A recent study conducted by Restore America’s Estuary, on the Snohomish estuary, begins to pinpoint the essential need for healthy estuaries and their link to global health. For the study, soil samples (from Smith Island, Spencer Island and Qwuloolt to name a few) were taken in order to establish a count of CO2 emissions that are captured and stored within estuaries that vary in health condition.

Photo Source: Big Sky Carbon — Image Source: Big Sky Carbon

There are numerous ways to remove carbon emissions, most are natural and work through plant life such as forests while others are less natural and work through power plants that capture CO2 and bury it back into the earth or ocean. Coastal wetlands have been labeled as Blue Carbon sequesters and have been found to greatly reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions. Throughout the USA, tidal marshes, tidal forests, saltmarsh grasses, seagrasses, and the mangroves along the Gulf Coast are more effective at sequestering carbon (up to a 100 times faster) and are able to store it for longer periods of time as compared to forests.

“This report is a call to action. We need to invest more substantially in coastal restoration nationwide and in science to increase our understanding of the climate benefits which accrue from coastal restoration and protection efforts,” said Emmett-Mattox, Senior Director for Restore America’s Estuaries and co-author on the study. “Sea-level rise will only make restoration more difficult and costly in the future. The time for progress is now.”

Through this study a blue carbon working group can be established which will focus, for years to come, on restoring and monitoring Pacific Northwest region coastal wetlands in order to continue collecting and analyzing data which will help to influence better-quality land management, update policies that could one day apply to wetlands nationally.

Due to human impact, coastal wetlands are disappearing at a rapid rate, “at current conversion rates, 30–40% of tidal marshes and seagrasses and nearly 100% of mangroves could be lost in the next 100 years.” (Estimating Global “Blue Carbon” Emissions from Conversion and Degradation of Vegetated Coastal Ecosystems.Pendleton et al., 2012). Although, both are time consuming, maintenance of estuaries is more cost effective than restoring and with rising sea levels (estuary health and life depend on average sea levels), estuaries are losing ground and time has become an issue as well. This national loss of wetlands has branded the Snohomish Estuary as an excellent case study for restoration and estimates of carbon storage.

“It is very fitting that we are implementing some of the world’s leading Blue Carbon research here in Puget Sound,” said Steve Dubiel, Executive Director of EarthCorps. “We have always known that wetlands are a kind of breadbasket, thanks to the salmon and shellfish they support. Now we are learning that they are also a carbon sponge.”

“Coastal Blue Carbon Opportunity Assessment for Snohomish Estuary: The Climate Benefits of Estuary Restoration” finds that currently planned and in-construction restoration projects in the Snohomish estuary will result in at least 2.55 million tons of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere over the next 100-years. This is equivalent to the 1-year emissions for 500,000 average passenger cars. If plans expanded to fully restore the Snohomish estuary, the sequestration potential jumps to 8.8 million tons of CO2 or, in other terms, equal to the 1-year emissions of about 1.7 million passenger cars.

In addition to the climate benefits outlined by the study, healthy and restored estuaries act as spawning grounds and nurseries for commercially and recreationally important fish and shellfish species, provide storm buffers for coastal communities, filter pollutants, and provide habitat for numerous species of fish and wildlife, as well as recreational opportunities for hundreds of millions of Americans annually.

Being Frank: New Hatchery is a Blessing

By Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

OLYMPIA – I was excited to attend a groundbreaking ceremony recently for a new state salmon hatchery at Voights Creek near Orting. The new facility replaces a hatchery – nearly wiped out by floods in 2009 – that has been operating on the creek since the early 1900s. Close tribal and state cooperation made the new hatchery a reality. It will be the first new state salmon hatchery built in the past couple of decades.

I’m glad that the old hatchery is being replaced. We can’t afford to lose any more of them or the salmon they provide, despite what you might be hearing these days.

Closing the Voights Creek Hatchery would mean the annual loss of 1.6 million fall chinook salmon and 780,000 coho salmon. That’s in addition to 400,000 more fall chinook and 100,000 additional coho that are transferred from the facility to the Puyallup Tribe’s hatchery for release into the Puyallup River each year.

Hatcheries have been getting a bad rap lately. Tribal, state and federal hatcheries are under fire from lawsuits filed by a few extremist groups who think that all wild salmon and steelhead are good and all hatchery-produced fish are evil. I’m not sure what they’re trying to achieve. All fishermen – Indian and non-Indian – rely on hatcheries, because fisheries are supported by them. Some hatcheries produce fish for harvest. Others serve as nurseries to supplement weak wild stocks.

It’s really pretty simple. No hatcheries equals no fishing. For anyone. That’s unacceptable to the treaty Indian tribes in western Washington, because our constitutionally protected fishing right depends on salmon being available for harvest.

Hatchery opponents argue that when hatchery fish breed with wild fish, their offspring don’t survive as well. But research by the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho has shown that’s not always the case.

The bottom line is that we will need salmon hatcheries for as long as lost and damaged habitat prevents salmon recovery. We would prefer not to rely so heavily on hatcheries, but today more than half of the chinook and coho harvested by Indian and non-Indian fishermen come from hatcheries.

We’ve become dependent on the fish produced in hatcheries because we are losing the battle to recover naturally spawning salmon and their habitat. I think we are going to rely on hatcheries for quite some time, because salmon habitat is being lost and damaged faster than it can be restored and protected, and the trend isn’t improving.

While we celebrate this year the 40^th anniversary of the Boldt decision in U.S. v. Washington, we’re also marking the 40^th anniversary of the federal Endangered Species Act. The ESA is supposed to help recover threatened wild salmon stocks, but that’s not happening because the law is not being used to protect salmon habitat and ensure that recovery plans are being implemented.

That’s why we are also marking the 15^th anniversary of the 1999 ESA listing of Puget Sound chinook, Hood Canal summer chum and Lake Ozette sockeye. Puget Sound steelhead were added to the list in 2007. While some stocks of Hood Canal summer chum are showing signs of recovery, Puget Sound coho are now a candidate species for listing.

Even closing all hatcheries and ending all fisheries would not bring back the salmon. That’s because fixing and protecting habitat are the most important components of salmon recovery. From the beginning to the end of the salmon’s life cycle, it is the overall quantity and quality of habitat that determine the strength of the resource.

It’s one thing to restore salmon habitat. It is another to protect it. If we want salmon in our world to thrive once again, we must do both.

Soundings: Sorting out the feeding habits of gray whales

By John Dodge, The Olympian

Marine mammal researchers have learned over the years that the gray whale spring migration from their breeding grounds in Baja, Calif., is not all black and white. It’s, pardon the expression, several shades of gray.

More than 20,000 of these marine giants start out each year in the late winter and early spring on a 5,000- to 6,800-mile journey to their feeding grounds in the Bering, Beaufort and Chukchi seas. It’s one of the longest mammal migrations worldwide by creatures that reach 50 feet long and can weigh 40 tons. They don’t all make it nonstop or in its entirety for a variety of reasons.

John Calambokidis, an Evergreen State College graduate and one of the founders of Cascadia Research, a well-respected, Olympia-based marine mammal research group, has more than 25 years of experience figuring out what the gray whale migration is all about. Generally, it breaks down into four categories of whales, he explained to me.

The vast majority of the grays do make it to the three seas that ring northwestern Alaska, spending the summer months opening their filter-feeding mouths to feast on a varied diet of crustaceans, crab larvae, small fish and marine worms. These are some of the same whales that draw the oohs and aahs of whale-watchers at land and at sea all along the ocean migration route.

But there’s another genetically distinct group of grays — they’re known in scientific circles as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group. As their name suggests, they spend the spring, summer and fall spread off the outer coast from Northern California to northern British Columbia, exhibiting feeding behavior apparently learned from the maternal side of their lineage.

A third and smaller group has become known as the Puget Sound Group. This group of about a dozen, primarily male gray whales veers off from the larger migratory return like clockwork each early spring to hang out in the shrimp-rich waters of Possession Sound between Whidbey Island and Everett.

The first of the Puget Sound visitors was seen this past weekend. This old bull whale is nicknamed “Little Patch.” He’s been the first to show up for the past two years. He’ll soon be joined by others, many of them individuals that Calambokidis and his colleagues first starting seeing nearly 25 years ago.

Marine mammal scientists rely on the unique and stable pattern of mottling on each whale’s body to tell the individuals apart.

The dozen or so whales in the Puget Sound Group complete the migration. They hightail it to Alaska in late May or early June.

The Puget Sound Group provides one of the best chances of seeing gray whales in the wild. Island Adventures has been offering gray-whale-watching tours out of Everett for the past decade. They’re currently scheduled to run through May 18. The company claims a 99.5 percent success rate at seeing a gray whale. It just goes to show that Little Patch and his companions are as reliable precursors to spring as the Lenten rose, daffodils and crocuses in the flower beds at Horsefeathers Farm.

Calambokidis said Island Adventures has been helpful with gray whale research over the years, helping researchers to identify individual whales.

The fourth group of migrating grays whales is known as the stragglers. Whales that fall into this group are often sick or injured and die without completing the migration. The southern end of Puget Sound is often their final stop before they wash ashore.

I’ve grown to dread news of a gray whale in South Sound waters. Invariably, the story of gray whales in our midst has a sad ending.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MOVE

This just in from the Capitol Land Trust: Eric Erler, executive director of the Olympia-based nonprofit, is stepping down from the post after 13 years. Erler will remain with the land trust in a new capacity, working to build financial support and new partnerships for the land conservation group.

The land trust board is accepting applications through March 24 to fill the director role. For more information about the job description and how to apply, visit the land trust website at capitollandtrust.org.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/06/3018911/sorting-out-the-feeding-habits.html#storylink=cpy

Rainwater Management at Tulalip

Tulalip Tribes Natural Resources is hosting three workshops on rainwater management, beginning Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Larsen Announces Funding for Skagit Valley Flood Study and Qwuloolt Estuary Restoration

Press Release, U.S. Representative Rick Larsen

WASHINGTON—Rep. Rick Larsen, WA-02, announced $760,000 in funding for local flood protection and estuary restoration projects. The Skagit General Investigation (G.I) Study will be receiving $400,000 and the Qwuloolt Estuary Restoration Project will be receiving $360,000. Citing the need for long-term flood protection in the Skagit River valley, Larsen pressed the Army Corps for funding last month.

“Communities in Skagit County have stayed focused on getting the G.I. Study finished,” Larsen said. “This ongoing commitment from the Army Corps is great news and sends a clear message that the federal government is going to keep its agreement in Skagit County.

“The Qwuloolt Estuary Restoration Project will be the largest tidal marsh restoration project ever completed in our state. This project is not just about protecting the environment. It is about protecting our economy. Restoring the estuary will enhance the role of fishing in our economy and keep a commitment to our tribal and city partners and provide critical habitat for salmon.”

More information on the Army Corps’ announcement of funding is available here.

Can a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? South Dakota Tribes Stand Firm Against Keystone XL

Vimeo/Moccasins on the GroundCan a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? Many American Indians are game to find out. Above, a still from the video compiled by Moccasins on the Ground about Keystone XL resistance. — Vimeo/Moccasins on the Ground
Can a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? Many American Indians are game to find out. Above, a still from the video compiled by Moccasins on the Ground about Keystone XL resistance.

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

From the Oglala Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation to the Rosebud Sioux and others, American Indians are standing firm against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run through or skirt their territory if approved.

The Lakota Sioux have been pushing back against TransCanada, the conglomerate that wants to run the 1,700-mile-long pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, for years. Last week the Rosebud Sioux passed a unanimous resolution against the project. And a group of American Indian tribal leaders opposing the pipeline have vowed to take a “last stand” and are working together, training opponents to put up passive resistance if it comes to that.

“We see what the tar sand oil mining is causing in Canada, we see what the oil drilling in the Dakotas is doing—as they gouge her [Mother Nature] and rape her and hurt her, we know it’s all the same ecosystem that we all need to live in,” Lakota activist and Pine Ridge resident Debra White Plume told Inter Press Service News Agency last month. “For us it’s a spiritual stand—it’s our relative, it hurts us.”

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe approved a resolution on February 25 to reject outright a document that the federal government wants the tribe’s leaders to sign saying that they have been adequately consulted according to the law.

“This Programmatic Agreement for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project has not met the standards of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, because the Rosebud Sioux Tribe has not been consulted,” said Council Representative Russell Eagle Bear in a statement from the tribe. “Additionally, the Cultural Surveys that have been conducted already are inadequate and did not cover adequate on-the-ground coverage to verify known culturally sensitive sites and areas.”

Keystone XL would wend its way through the Great Sioux Nation, including the lands of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, making them the appropriate tribe to be consulted on land within Tripp, Gregory, Lyman, Todd, and Mellette Counties in South Dakota, the statement said.

“This is a flawed document and it will not be accepted,” Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council President Cyril Scott said of the federal agreement they are being asked to sign. “It is our job as the Tribal Council to take action to protect the health and welfare of our people, and this resolution puts the federal government on notice.”

It is not the first time the government has been accused of fabricating consultation. The first draft of the environmental assessment report, released a year ago, met with resistance from tribes over what they said were inaccuracies, shoddy research and incomplete consultation, among other objections.

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) also came out against the conclusions in the draft environmental assessment.

The U.S. Department of State is currently evaluating the final version of the environmental assessment report and accepting input from several federal agencies during a 90-day public comment period that began on January 31, when the report was issued, according to U.S. News & World Report. The State Department is also studying the consultants on the report as more and more revelations about their ties to TransCanada come to light.

Nearly 400 people, many of them students, were arrested last weekend when they chained themselves to the White House fence in protest of the pipeline, the Washington Post reported.

The Native group Moccasins on the Ground has been conducting training sessions and recently hosted a conference in Rapid City, Help Save Mother Earth from the Keystone Pipeline, to teach civil disobedience tactics.

“As the process of public comment, hearings, and other aspects of an international application continue, each door is closing to protecting sacred water and our Human Right to Water,” said Debra White Plume, a Lakota activist who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and has been very vocal in opposing the pipeline, in a statement from Moccasins on the Ground. “Soon the only door left open will be the door to direct action.”

Below, Moccasins on the Ground leaders explain what draws them to protect the sacred water and address the question, Can a tipi stop a pipeline?

Standing Against GMOs Is Standing for Sovereignty

Darla Antoine, Indian Country Today Media Network

There are plenty of reasons to join the cause to label or eliminate foods that contain genetically modified ingredients: first of all, just because something is deemed legal by the government does not make it safe for humans. Ask any indigenous person in any country: how many things deemed “legal” have done harm to their cultures and communities? GMOs are no different.

Take Hawaii, for example. Last year the chain of islands organized several large demonstrations to speak out against the biotech companies trying to make the island state their home. Because Hawaii is geographically isolated and has an ideal growing climate, plus abundant natural resources, five of the world’s biggest biotech companies have targeted the islands as their testing field for chemical and food engineering. What does this mean? Well, to Hawaiians it means that over 70 different chemicals have been sprayed onto genetically engineered crops during field tests that went undisclosed to the public—meaning the surrounding communities were given no warning nor a chance to protect themselves from exposure through wind, water or contaminated soil. Some of these field tests took place near homes and schools. All of this in a state where adult on-set diabetes and cancer rates have increased over the last 10 years.

Many native Hawaiians are actively speaking out against the genetic modification of their food supply, stating that GMOs are sacrilegious to their indigenous culture. Miliani B. Strask, a native Hawaiian attorney wrote, “For Hawaii’s indigenous peoples, the concepts underlying genetic manipulation of life forms are offensive and contrary to the cultural values of aloha ‘ʻāina [love for the land].”

Across the ocean in a vastly different climate, the Diné are in accord. In 2013 The Navajo Nation declared themselves to be a GMO and pesticide-free nation. This encompasses 10 million acres of land and more than 250,000 people. Their reasoning? In part: Corn is sacred.

In the year 2000, only 25 percent of the corn growing in the United States was genetically modified. In 2013 that number was up to 90 percent. Along with more GMO corn comes more super-weeds and super-pests adapting to live alongside the corn, which then needs even more intense super-chemicals to kill them off. Biotech companies like Monsanto have even been allowed to patent their seeds. If their seeds blow into your field and begin to grow? You owe them money. This has led to thousands of farmers in India to take their own life as they spiral into a debt they cannot pay off.

In their resolution against GMOs and pesticides, the Dine cited the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, specifically Article 31, which states:

“Indigenous Peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect, and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies, and cultures, including . . . seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora . . .”

GMOs may cause yet-unknown health consequences, but as indigenous people they may also threaten cultural heritage, tradition and even sovereignty. Corn IS sacred. It is our mother and our nurturer. We cannot stand idly by as she is mutated and commoditized into something that poisons the land, the water and the people.

Over 61 countries, covering 40 percent of the world’s population and all of the European Union already label genetically modified foods. And in 50 countries there are severe restrictions or outright bans of GMOs—Canada and the United States are not among any of these countries. Whether you believe genetically modified food can cause cancer or not, this is one cause worth standing up for: plant heirloom seeds in your garden, don’t use pesticides and herbicides, and vote to label GMO foods. If labeling GMO foods isn’t on your local ballot, fight to get it on there.

Darla Antoine is an enrolled member of the Okanagan Indian Band in British Columbia and grew up in Eastern Washington State. For three years, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the Midwest, reporting on issues relevant to the Native and Hispanic communities, and most recently served as a producer for Native America Calling. In 2011, she moved to Costa Rica, where she currently lives with her husband and their infant son. She lives on an organic and sustainable farm in the “cloud forest”—the highlands of Costa Rica, 9,000 feet above sea level. Due to the high elevation, the conditions for farming and gardening are similar to that of the Pacific Northwest—cold and rainy for most of the year with a short growing season. Antoine has an herb garden, green house, a bee hive, cows, a goat, and two trout ponds stocked with hundreds of rainbow trout.

NCAI Encouraged By EPA Announcement Regarding Bristol Bay Salmon Fisheries

Press release, The National Congress of American Indians

WASHINGTON, DC – The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is encouraged by the news that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to review appropriate options to protect the salmon fishery in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

The Bristol Bay watershed is the largest source for sockeye salmon in the world. Current proposals for mines in the vicinity, with the resultant runoff and pollution, threaten the purity of Bay waters and thus the source of income and food for Alaska Native peoples and other fishermen.

Of the EPA announcement, NCAI President Brian Cladoosby remarked:

“While NCAI has not taken an official position on the mining proposals, I will say that for 100 years the salmon have needed a united voice to step up and speak for them. There are too many wetlands, streams, and clean water sources that have been lost along the West Coast and up to Alaska. We have to stand together to protect the environment and natural resources for the next generation. As a fisherman, a father, and a tribal leader, I am committed to restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of our Nation’s waterways. Protecting our waters and our salmon is our responsibility to ensure future generations can enjoy, care for, and be sustained by our lands and water.”

To read the most recent NCAI resolution on the issue, click here.

U.S. moves towards Atlantic oil exploration, stirring debate over sea life

A blue whale near rigs off Southern California. Experts disagree on the effects of seismic surveys on sea mammals. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

By Michael Wines, The New York Times

The Interior Department opened the door on Thursday to the first searches in decades for oiland gas off the Atlantic coast, recommending that undersea seismic surveys proceed, though with a host of safeguards to shield marine life from much of their impact.

The recommendation is likely to be adopted after a period of public comment and over objections by environmental activists who say it will be ruinous for the climate and sea life alike.

The American Petroleum Institute called the recommendation a critical step toward bolstering the nation’s energy security, predicting that oil and gas production in the region could create 280,000 new jobs and generate $195 billion in private investment.

Activists were livid. Allowing exploration “could be a death sentence for many marine mammals, and is needlessly turning the Atlantic Ocean into a blast zone,” Jacqueline Savitz, a vice president at the conservation group Oceana, said in a statement on Thursday.

Oceana and other groups have campaigned for months against the Atlantic survey plans, citing Interior Department calculations that the intense noise of seismic exploration could kill and injure thousands of dolphins and whales.

But while the assessment released on Thursday repeats those estimates, it also largely dismisses them, stating that they employ multiple worst-case scenarios and ignore measures by humans and the mammals themselves to avoid harm.

Many marine scientists say the estimates of death and injury are at best seriously inflated. “There’s no argument that some of these sounds can harm animals, but it’s blown out of proportion,” Arthur N. Popper, who heads the University of Maryland’s laboratory of aquatic bioacoustics, said in an interview. “It’s the Flipper syndrome, or ‘Free Willy.’ ”

How the noise affects sea mammals’ behavior in the long term — an issue about which little is known — is a much greater concern, he said.

A formal decision to proceed with surveys would reopen a swath off the East Coast stretching from Delaware to Cape Canaveral, Fla., that has been closed to petroleum exploration since the early 1980s.

Actual drilling of test wells could not begin until a White House ban on production in the Atlantic expires in 2017, and even then, only after the government agrees to lease ocean tracts to oil companies, an issue officials have barely begun to study.

The petroleum industry has sunk 51 wells off the East Coast — none of them successful enough to begin production — in decades past. But the Interior Department said in 2011 that 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 312 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could lie in the exploration area, and nine companies have already applied for permits to begin surveys.

President Obama committed in 2010 to allowing oil and gas surveys along the same stretch of the Atlantic, and the government had planned to lease tracts off the Virginia coast for exploration in 2011. But those plans collapsed after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in April 2010, and the government later banned activity in the area until 2017.

Thirty-four species of whales and dolphins, including six endangered whales, live in the survey area. Environmental activists say seismic exploration could deeply imperil blue and humpback whales as well as the North American right whale, which numbers in the hundreds.

Surveys generally use compressed-air guns that produce repeated bursts of sound as loud as a howitzer, often for weeks or months on end. The Interior Department’s estimate said that up to 27,000 dolphins and 4,600 whales could die or be injured annually during exploration periods, and that three million more would suffer various behavioral changes.

But many scientists say death and injury are not a major concern. Decades of seismic exploration worldwide have yet to yield a confirmed whale death, the government says.

“It is quite unlikely that most sounds, in realistic scenarios, will directly cause injury or mortality to marine mammals,” Brandon Southall, perhaps the best-known expert on the issue, wrote in an email exchange. “Most of the issues now really have to do with what are the sublethal effects — what are the changes in behavior that may happen.” Dr. Southall is president ofSEA Incorporated, an environmental consultancy in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Loud sounds like seismic blasts appear to cause stress to marine mammals, just as they do to humans. Experts say seismic exploration could alter feeding and mating habits, for example, or simply drown out whales’ and dolphins’ efforts to communicate or find one another. But the true impact has yet to be measured; there is no easy way to gauge the long-term effect of sound on animals that are constantly moving.

“These animals are living for decades, if not centuries,” said Aaron Rice, the director of Cornell University’s bioacoustics research program. “The responses you see are not going to manifest themselves in hours or days or weeks. We’re largely speculating as to what the consequences will be. But in my mind, the absence of data doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.”