1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

The proposed revisions to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) would significantly weaken protections for whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals. These changes prioritize industry interests over conservation, allowing increased harm and deaths from offshore development, fishing bycatch, and other human activities. Key concerning proposals include removing the "potential to disturb" standard for harassment, relaxing standards for declining populations to qualify as "strategic" stocks requiring immediate recovery actions, increasing allowable death rates by up to 900% by altering the Potential Biological Removal formula, and delaying vital protections for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. This undermines the MMPA's purpose of conserving marine mammal populations. Instead of gutting these regulations, we should enhance measures to safeguard vulnerable species from further declines driven by human impacts. I urge you to oppose these damaging proposals and uphold strong, science-based protections for marine mammals under the MMPA.