The State of Alaska filed a complaint Feb. 15 against the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, asking a U.S. District Court to vacate the critical habitat designations for ringed and bearded seals.
The area designated for the two seal species is much larger than the state of Texas and includes approximately 324,105 square miles of coastal waters along the North Slope and the adjacent Outer Continental Shelf, or OCS.
