Farah Kavarana
Research Mentor(s): Devin Judge-Lord
Mentor Department:
Authors: Farah Kavarana, Devin Judge-Lord
Session: Session 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 102
Abstract
One key way that the government protects endangered species, like the Orca, the Atlantic Large Whale, or the North Atlantic Right Whale, is by establishing their critical habitats, or federally protected regions. These protections are often controversial due to the limitations they place on activities conducted within stated areas. When federal agencies write new regulations regarding these habitats, they briefly open the floor to public comments between the draft and final version of the rule. This research project examines these public comment records on proposed federal regulations relating to whale species’ critical habitats. Research methodology involves reading of proposed and final policy documents, and coding various properties of public comments to analyze the common qualities across requests which were granted in the final rule. The groups commenting on whale habitat legislation usually fall into one of three coalitions: business interest groups, environmental nonprofits, or fellow government agencies. The impact of these three coalitions on the final rule is closely examined. The aim is to assess the impact these comments have on the final policy and whether public suggestions are taken into account when finalizing the rule. Findings indicate a correlation between the kind of coalition commenting and the likelihood of the commenter’s requests being met in the final rule. Federal public comment records are rarely examined in large-scale research due to their uniquely qualitative properties, which makes data mining tedious and time-consuming. This project is one of the first large-scale attempts to code this data manually. In the larger context of this project, these findings will show which coalitions most influence federal policy regarding whale species’ critical habitats. Public interest environmental groups can benefit from this research as it identifies the attributes of successful public comments in the world of whale critical habitat designation. Features of comments with higher success rates can then be implemented in future public comments to increase potential influence over the final rule, making a difference in the world of environmental policy and endangered species regulation.
