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Cook Inlet beluga whales have been listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday.

The listing is meant to protect the unique Cook Inlet species from extinction.

The whales were listed as "depleted" in 2000 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Scientists have estimated that as many as 1,300 may have been alive in the late 1980s, but the population declined to around 653 by 1994. More recent studies show even that low number had been cut in half by 1998.

The intervening years have seen the numbers wax and wane within a narrow range. An estimated 375 are thought to exist today.

Concern over the declining population led Trustees for Alaska to file a petition in 2006 seeking to have the mammals' status raised by listing them as endangered under the ESA. In response, NOAA's Fisheries Service conducted a scientific review of available data, finding that the whale population had undergone significant decline, despite restrictions on Alaska Native subsistence harvests starting in 1999.

"In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering," said James Balsiger, NOAA acting assistant administrator for NOAA's Fisheries Service, in an agency press release.

Recovery of the whales, NOAA said, "is potentially hindered by strandings; continued development within and along upper Cook Inlet and the cumulative effects on important beluga habitat; oil and gas exploration, development and production; industrial activities that discharge or accidentally spill pollutants; disease; and predation by killer whales."

The federal agency will identify habitat essential to the conservation of the belugas in a separate rulemaking within a year, the NOAA announcement said.

"It is heartening that science prevailed over politicians," said Bob Shavelson, head of Cook Inletkeeper, a nonprofit organization that watchdogs the Cook Inlet watershed and which has been engaged in the effort to have the whales listed as endangered.

Asked how the whales' new status might impact future oil and gas development in the inlet, Shavelson said he wasn't sure. Historically, the industry has always "jumped through all the hoops" necessary to conduct business, he said. That practice is likely to continue despite any new regulatory hurdles that might arise, he added.

"Let me add a caveat to that, however. Even though they've jumped through all the hoops, there are still opportunities for improvement, for example, with discharges," Shavelson said.

"Everything the industry did (to follow existing rules) is legal, but they'll still triple the toxic dumping under the current permit," he added, referring to the Cook Inlet General Permit under which the industry discharges pollutants into the inlet. Shavelson said federal agencies had "buckled under political pressure" in writing that permit.

That led a coalition of Alaska Native villages, commercial fishing organizations and Cook Inletkeeper to sue the Environmental Protection Agency in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in San Francisco challenging the general discharge permit. Plaintiffs contended that the EPA ignored hundreds of public comments raising issue with EPA's proposal to relax limits on certain pollutants. Plaintiffs also said that the agency violated the Clean Water Act when it OK'd the five-year discharge permit.

There has been no decision in the case on the permit, yet. It isn't clear if the new endangered designation could affect the permit's terms. Shavelson had doubts that retroactive changes would be made, but the status could affect future permits.

Justin Massey, with the Trustees, said the Endangered Species Act "may require NOAA to consult with EPA to ensure that the CIPG (the permit) does not jeopardize the continued existence of the beluga, or adversely modify any critical habitat that NOAA will designate for it."

Massey said Trustees would examine the issue over the next two months and communicate with NOAA and EPA if needed.

Hal Spence can be reached at hspence@ptialaska.net.