Having seen no action on a petition from last year, the Center for Biological Diversity says it will sue to force the U.S. Interior Department to consider listing the walrus as a threatened species. Walruses do all of their resting between foraging trips, breeding, and chillaxing on Arctic sea ice, which is rapidly disappearing. And “[a]s the sea ice recedes, so does the future of the Pacific walrus,” says CBD’s Shaye Wolf. Petroleum development in walrus habitat, such as the newly leased Chukchi Sea, is also a concern. Climate change has already been impacting the walruses — whose scientific name, by the by, means “tooth-walking sea horse” — causing them to trample each other and separating babies from their mamas.
