PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the world's rarest whale species is having more babies this year than in some recent seasons, but experts say many more young are needed to help stave off the possibility of extinction.
The North Atlantic right whale's population numbers an estimated 384 animals and is slowly rising after several years of decline. The whales have gained more than 7% of their 2020 population, according to scientists who study them.
The whales give birth off the southeastern United States every winter before migrating north to feed. Researchers have identified 15 calves this winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.
That number is higher than two of the last three winters, but the species needs “approximately 50 or more calves per year for many years” to stop its decline and allow for recovery, NOAA said in a statement. The whales are vulnerable to collisions with large ships and entanglement in commercial fishing gear.
This year's number is encouraging, but the species remains in peril without stronger laws to protect against those threats, said Gib Brogan, senior campaign director with environmental group Oceana. The federal government is in the midst of a moratorium on federal rules designed to protect right whales until 2028, and commercial fishing groups have pushed for a proposal to extend that pause for even longer.
There is still time left for more baby whales to be born this winter, but 50 is not a reasonable expectation because of a lack of reproductive females in the population, Brogan said.
“We're not going to be able to calve ourselves to recovery,” Brogan said. “We also need to be doing more to tackle the two primary causes of right whale deaths, being entanglement in fishing gear and being hit by boats.”
The whales have fared better than last winter, when they gave birth to only 11 calves, according to NOAA data. The whales have reached 20 calves only twice since 2010, and they gave birth to no calves in a disastrous 2018 season. The whales are less likely to reproduce when they have suffered injuries or are underfed, scientists have said.
The whales were hunted to the brink of extinction during the era of commercial whaling and have been federally protected for decades. They remain in a crisis at the moment because there have been more deaths than births in the population in the past decade, NOAA said in its statement.
FILE - A North Atlantic right whale feeds on the surface of Cape Cod bay off the coast of Plymouth, Mass., March 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday threw out longtime litigation over education funding in the state, a decision that's likely to keep intact the power to decide how much money to spend and where with the legislature, not judges.
The 4-3 ruling, led by Republican justices on the court, set aside a landmark ruling in 2022 when the court, then with a Democratic majority, ruled that a lower court judge had the authority to order that taxpayer money be directed to state agencies to address longstanding education inequities.
The following year, another trial judge calculated that the state owed $678 million to fulfill two years of an eight-year, multibillion-dollar comprehensive remedial plan in part to improve teacher recruitment and salaries, expand prekindergarten and help students with disabilities.
In Thursday's ruling, Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote that what started as a modest lawsuit over education spending in one county “became a full-scale, facial assault on the entire educational system enacted by the General Assembly.” Since then, Newby said, judicial actions had gone too far.
When the case expanded “the trial court’s authority to hear the case likewise ceased,” Newby wrote while ordering the school funding litigation be dismissed.
The decision came more than two years after the court heard oral arguments. Republicans who control the General Assembly won’t be obligated to comply with the remedial plan as it writes state budgets, including one for this year that’s now several months late.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein will have to rely more on persuading lawmakers and using his veto stamp to spend more on his favored education programs and initiatives. Stein was North Carolina's attorney general when the 2022 ruling was handed down.
“The Supreme Court simply ignored its own established precedent, enabling the General Assembly to continue to deprive another generation of North Carolina students of the education promised by our constitution,” Stein said in a statement Thursday.
Two Democratic justices and one Republican dissented in Thursday's ruling.
Associate Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, said the decision seemed more about dealing with how the 2022 decision was reached than what happens to students.
“Allowing the state to escape judicial scrutiny for constitutional rights violations through its behavior during litigation quickly turns constitutional rights into words on paper — morally compelling but functionally useless,” she wrote.
Attention will now turn toward crafting the next state education spending proposal. The General Assembly reconvenes this month. Close to 40% of the state’s more than $30 billion in annual spending to operate government goes to K-12 funding alone.
Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said in a news release that “liberal education special interests have improperly tried to hijack North Carolina’s constitutional funding process in order to impose their policy preferences via judicial fiat. Today’s decision confirms that the proper pathway for policymaking is the legislative process.”
Critics of GOP education spending have pointed in part to taxpayer-funded scholarships for K-12 students to attend private schools as evidence more could be done for public school children.
The litigation began in 1994, when several school districts in low-income areas and families of children sued and accused the state of violating North Carolina's constitution by not providing adequate education funding.
The case is often referred to as “Leandro” — for the last name of one of the students who sued.
Supreme Court decisions in the case from 1997 and 2004 found the state constitution directs all children must receive the “opportunity to receive a sound basic education,” and that the state remained poorly equipped to comply with that dictate. Many say it's a problem still unresolved.
“The people paying the price for our leaders’ failure are not abstractions. They are the generations of children in rural communities, past and present, who waited for 30 years for a promise never fulfilled,” Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said in a news release.
The court’s Democratic majority in 2022 had determined that those Supreme Court decisions along with the constitution’s “right to the privilege of education” and years of inaction by elected officials created an “extraordinary” situation that gave the late Judge David Lee power to order funds be spent without a specific law enacted by the General Assembly.
FILE - North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby addresses the audience at the North Carolina Medal of Valor Ceremony at the Legislative Building, in Raleigh, N.C., July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Makiya Seminera, File)
