Dear Marmam, Apologies for cross-posting. My co-authors and I are pleased to announce a new pair of papers exploring the management of noise impacts in Canada, and elsewhere. Andrew J. Wright & Hilary B. Moors-Murphy 2022. Regulating Impacts of Noise on Marine Mammals in North America: An Overview of the Legal Frameworks in Canada and the United States. Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13880292.2022.2151116 and Andrew J. Wright, Hilary B. Moors-Murphy & Harald Yurk 2022. Applying technical guidance from the USA for management of impacts of anthropogenic noise on wildlife in other countries: the Canadian context. Canadian Journal of Zoology, https://doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2022-0085 (Currently available in a Just-In format, fully formatted version to follow soon.) Abstracts and links follow below. Please also send me an email at marinebrit@gmail.com for a copy if you don't have access. All the best for the holidays, Andrew Andrew J. Wright & Hilary B. Moors-Murphy 2022. Regulating Impacts of Noise on Marine Mammals in North America: An Overview of the Legal Frameworks in Canada and the United States. Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13880292.2022.2151116 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13880292.2022.2151116?src= Abstract: Marine mammals are protected under dedicated taxonomic legislation, endangered species legislation, and general environmental stewardship laws in many countries. Governments and agencies within those countries are tasked with assessing and limiting human impacts in accordance with their own laws, including those arising from underwater noise emissions. While the United States (US) has established thresholds for permanent and temporary threshold shifts (PTS and TTS) in the hearing of marine mammals, Canada has not yet established specific numeric onset thresholds for hearing impairment or other noise-related impacts. Given that Canada and the US are jointly responsible for the management of a number of at-risk marine mammals, we provide a brief overview of the main laws and associated standards relevant to management of noise impacts on marine mammals in these two jurisdictions. The US PTS/TTS thresholds are only a small part of a suite of elements collectively applied to assess and mitigate the full range of impacts of noise on marine mammals, and the implementation of these (or any other) thresholds in Canada would not negate the need to conduct case-specific impact assessments to satisfy their own broader requirements. Caution should be taken when applying US thresholds to address Canadian legal standards, as there are substantial differences in the legal definitions to which these thresholds might be applied. Thus, the need for, and application of, similar generalised PTS/TTS thresholds in Canada is still under debate and noise impacts will likely continue to be assessed in different ways in these two bordering nations. Andrew J. Wright, Hilary B. Moors-Murphy & Harald Yurk 2022. Applying technical guidance from the USA for management of impacts of anthropogenic noise on wildlife in other countries: the Canadian context. Canadian Journal of Zoology, https://doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2022-0085 https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjz-2022-0085 Abstract: Technical Guidance from the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service recommends Federal agencies use estimated thresholds for peak sound pressure levels and weighted cumulative sound exposure levels for the onset of permanent (and temporary) hearing threshold shifts in marine mammals. These dual metrics were developed to inform impact assessments within the U.S. legal landscape. Despite its merits, the Technical Guidance contains uncertainties due to a lack of data on marine mammal hearing and auditory response to noise, the underlying assumptions about the representative value of existing data create limitations in the applicability of the Technical Guidance. These limitations warrant consideration before it can be applied effectively in other jurisdictions with different legal standards. Using the Canadian legal framework as a working example, we found that Canadian species are under-represented in the dataset used for the Technical Guidance, which also does not address all relevant impact types to meet the precautionary requirements of many Canadian legal standards. Thus, the Technical Guidance alone cannot address all Canadian legal standards and, if the Guidance is incorporated, some adjustments to the criteria within may be needed. -- Andrew Wright, Ph.D. VaquitaAreBrowncoats: Where Sci-Fi meets Science, the Cosmos meets Conservation and Firefly meets Flipper. Shiny https://www.facebook.com/vaquitaarebrowncoats. "We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it." Douglas Adams GNU Terry Pratchett