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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Groups Battle Over "No Otter Zone"

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Monday, August 5, 2013   

SAN DIEGO - A lawsuit is being filed over the decision to end the "no otter zone" in Southern California. Some fishing industry groups say allowing sea otters to come back will "ravage" valuable fisheries for sea urchins, lobsters and other species preyed on by the animals. However, environmental groups are defending the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's decision because they say the 1986 policy failed to promote sea otter recovery.

According to Jim Curland, advocacy program director for Friends of the Sea Otter, trying to keep an ocean-going animal out of a particular part of the ocean has always seemed a ridiculous notion.

"For recovery and for sea otters to survive and rebound in California, they need to be able to go freely into places that they historically occupied," he said.

The "no otter zone" was lifted in January after the Fish and Wildlife Service determined that enforcement of it jeopardized the continued survival of the species, because of the harm caused when moving sea otters out of the zone.

Curland said sea otters are necessary to balance the California coastal eco-system. He says unhealthy "artificial" fisheries were created when the sea otters were kept away.

"They didn't keep the various invertebrate animals in check, so abalone, sea urchins, crabs, all of these animals flourished," he said. "There were population booms beyond what would normally be present in a balanced system."

California sea otters are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Their population before fur traders arrived is believed to have been around 15,000. Last year, the animals' three-year population average was less than 2800.




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