The Gulf's rarest whale was a thorn in Big Oil's side. Now feds are slashing protections

[Zorro]

In recent weeks, the federal government has stripped protections for one of the world’s rarest whales at a rapid pace, threatening the survival of a species that calls the waters off Florida’s Gulf Coast home.

First, national security officials exempted the oil and gas industry from having to follow endangered species protections in the Gulf of Mexico, in the name of needing more offshore drilling.

Then officials proposed revisiting whether the Rice’s whale should be considered endangered at all. Now, a key federal official has even raised doubts about whether the critically endangered Rice’s whales are, in fact, their own species.

“We need to study that, and if it is not (a separate species), we need to stop the nonsense of treating something as if it’s endangered when, of course, it’s plentiful,” said U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during a congressional hearing last month. He asserted that marine scientists who’d deemed otherwise were biased.

His remarks contradicted scientific findings within his own agency. They also relied on a scientific opinion paper — the author of which told the Tampa Bay Times that Lutnick was drawing the wrong conclusions from his work.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2026/05/23/florida-trump-rices-whale-oil-drilling-gulf-of-mexico-endangered/