Lawsuit in the offing over failure to designate critical habitat for loggerhead turtles in NSs, other areas along Atlantic coastline
Though thousands of loggerhead sea turtles, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, nest along the Atlantic Coast each year, the National Marine Fisheries Service has not yet designated habitat critical to the species' survival, according to conservation groups planning to sue over that lack of designation.
On Thursday the groups moved to try to force that designation, announcing that they would sue the NMFS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the matter. Specifically, the groups want to see critical habitat for loggerheads designated along Florida's nesting beaches and in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.