Pentagon plans to relocate a Marine base on a Japanese island that is home to an imperiled and culturally revered seagoing mammal called the Okinawan dugong have disregarded a U.S. historic preservation law, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Thursday.
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The law doesn\'t require U.S. officials to protect the creature at all costs or cancel the relocation on the island of Okinawa, but it mandates that they study the effects of the move on any \"historically significant property\" and consider measures to ease those effects, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said.
She said the Defense Department did not comply with those standards when it reached an agreement with Japan in May 2006 on moving the base to an offshore site alongside and atop a coral reef where the dugong grazes.
Patel ruled in 2005 that the dugong could be considered a \"historically important property\" protected by U.S. law because of its status in Okinawan society. A lawyer for Japanese and U.S. environmentalists said Thursday\'s ruling is the first by any judge to find an overseas project in violation of the National Historic Preservation Act since Congress extended the law to U.S. activities abroad in 1980.
The ruling made it clear that the Defense Department must \"take a serious look at the impact of its actions overseas to avoid causing irrevocable harm to the cultural heritage of another nation,\" said Sarah Burt of Earthjustice, an Oakland nonprofit law firm that filed the suit in 2003.
Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames said the government was reviewing the ruling.
The dugong, a distant relative of the Florida manatee, is considered an ancestor of human beings in Okinawan folklore and is celebrated in songs still sung by shamans and residents who live along the bay that the creature inhabits.
The Okinawan dugong, a distinct subspecies, has dwindled to about 50 in number. Environmentalists say it could become extinct if Futenma Marine Corps Air Station is moved to the offshore area.
U.S. and Japanese officials have planned at least since 1997 to relocate the base from an area of central Okinawa that has become urbanized. Construction is due to begin in about three years and continue through 2014.
In seeking dismissal of the suit, Justice Department lawyers argued that protective measures were the responsibility of the Japanese government, which is conducting an environmental review under its own law before starting construction.
But Patel said the U.S. law requires the American government to conduct its own review. The judge quoted an October 2005 document on the U.S.-Japan negotiations that said the environmental issues \"are primarily a question of political will since any option will affect the environment and opponents will use environment-based arguments to advance their cause.\"
The statement indicates \"at best, plain ignorance of, and at worst, complete defiance of (the Defense Department\'s) obligation to consider the impacts of the (relocation) on the dugong,\" Patel said. "
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