Posted on 02/28/2008 9:04:58 PM PST by SmithL
SAN DIEGO – A rope barrier previously used at Children's Pool beach in La Jolla to protect a colony of harbor seals during their pupping season definitely won't go up this year.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the San Diego-based Animal Protection and Rescue League, which sought to compel San Diego to reinstall the rope.
“This means the rope barrier is dead – at least for this year,” said attorney Bryan Pease, co-founder of the animal group.
Pease said he will appeal the ruling.
In past years, San Diego officials installed the rope to encourage the public to maintain a respectful distance from pregnant and nursing seals that gather at the sandy cove.
Biologists from the National Marine Fisheries Service endorse the technique, saying the rope discourages beachgoers from frightening or annoying mother seals.
But two Superior Court judges have barred the city from putting up the rope because it would illegally restrict public access to the beach. They and appellate jurists have concluded that a 1931 tidelands grant transferring ownership of Children's Pool from California to San Diego gives humans priority over seals.
The state courts have ordered San Diego to dredge the cove, even if that would disperse the seals. Fecal matter from the seals has contaminated the beach, and dredging would lower bacterial counts and thus improve water quality.
Pease challenged the rulings in federal court. He argued that the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act trumps the tidelands grant, which requires the city to maintain the cove as a swimming beach for children.
In a seven-page ruling filed Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Miller said he declined to intervene in a case already decided by the state courts.
He also rejected the request for a preliminary injunction, which would have allowed the rope to go up temporarily, because it was unlikely that Pease would prevail if the issue went to trial.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act “specifically permits state and local government agencies to use non-lethal force to remove marine mammals that pose a health and safety threat,” Miller noted in his ruling.
Attorney Paul Kennerson said Miller's decision is helpful because it will keep San Diego moving forward on the dredging project. Kennerson had successfully sued the city to restore Children's Pool to its historic use.
“The Animal Protection and Rescue League was trying to run an end-around the state court judgment,” he said. “This keeps it all in one playing field.”
I might surprise some people that a fair number of liberal judges will still enforce the law properly (even from a conservative viewpoint) in most cases.
Sure, some judges are liberal enough they can find a way to reach the decision they want—regardless of the law and facts—if they consider the issue important enough, but others are really fair people.
And that worked for many decades, until the eco-wussies decided that the seals didn't have enough room on the entire rest of the California coast, and decided to banish the humans from enjoying this one protected spot.
My daughter, then about 10, was screamed at by the eco weanies around 2005 for daring to walk across that beach, even after the rope was ordered down and people were using it again.
My sense of "eco-weenies" is impotent delusional controllers. In reality they are more eco-criminals, cloaking themselves in "mother nature righteousness" to control others.
That beach is clearly man made. That the seals also prefer it rather than the natural coast suggests that these sad excuses for creative human beings could to better expending time, effort and expense to create a similar beach for seals. Of course that would require quite a bit more than lip service and posturing.
This has nothing to do with the ability of seals to breed adequately. It has everything to do with activists and bureaucrats lording their power over everybody else.
You don't want her walking where the seals hang anyway. The feces carries pathogens that infect people. Seals will attack a child as well, and can move faster than a child would expect, particularly when surprised.
All true. I hope they do dredge it, clean it and return it to human use.....as it was intended when it was built for children for posterity, with private funds.
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