Government Slashes Funding for Marine Mammal Rescue
Rescuers working on the front lines of massive marine mammal die-offs on both U.S. coasts have been dealt a hard blow during an already difficult year. On Tuesday, dozens of rescue centers learned they wouldn’t be getting any federal financial help for the next year.
“We are the boots on the ground, we are the people that are responding to the strandings,” said Mark Swingle, director of research and conservation at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center, one of the organizations that didn’t get funding. Swingle’s group is in the midst of responding to one of the worst dolphin die-offs in memory: More than 200 animals have died this summer in Virginia alone. “We’re up to our eyeballs trying to make ends meet,” he said.
In recent years, roughly $4 million in funds has been available to members of the national marine mammal stranding network. These are the people like Swingle who respond when dead whales wash up on beaches, when hundreds of dolphins and manatees die along the East Coast, and when thousands of starving sea lion pups strand themselves on California beaches.
This year, after being forced by Congress to slash its $5.1 billion budget by about 7 percent, NOAA cut funding for the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program that provided the money. The agency initially proposed eliminating funding for the Prescott program entirely. The good news is that it managed to find $1 million, now distributed among 12 stranding network partners. (About 40 rescue centers typically receive grants.)
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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/09/budget-cuts-marine-mammal-rescue-program/
I guess that's where they found some of the money to blow up things in the middle east!
= new reply since forum marked as read
accounting, obfuscate the problem. 
