Wildlife service proposes sea otter take permit for pile driving near Juneau

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed, but not yet granted, an authorization that would let pile driving in Stephens Passage legally injure or disturb northern sea otters for up to a year. The proposal is now open for public comment before any final decision is made.

The Service put forward the incidental harassment authorization in response to a request from Turnagain Marine Construction, which is seeking cover for pile driving and marine construction activities in Stephens Passage near Juneau. Comments are due by Sept. 11, 2026, under Docket No. FWS-R7-ES-2026-2312, submitted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov or by U.S. mail to the Service's public comments processing office in Falls Church, Virginia. The Service will not accept comments by email, fax or hand delivery. A draft environmental assessment is open for review during the same comment window.

"We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), propose to authorize incidental take by harassment of small numbers of northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) from the Southeast Alaska stock for a period of up to 1 year from the date of issuance," the Service said in the Federal Register notice published August 12.

The proposal would cover both Level A harassment, which can include injury, and Level B harassment, which covers behavioral disturbance.

For Turnagain Marine Construction, the authorization is a permitting step. The company is seeking clearance so it can carry out pile driving and marine construction for its Juneau terminal project while staying within federal marine mammal rules. Its schedule depends on receiving the authorization and related environmental clearance. The Service frames the one-year permit, paired with mitigation and public review, as the mechanism the Marine Mammal Protection Act provides for allowing construction while limiting harm.

Other stakeholders have a direct interest in how that balance is struck. Conservation and marine mammal advocacy groups focus on whether construction-related harassment is minimized and whether repeated project permits could cumulatively affect otter behavior and habitat use. Alaska Native coastal communities and tribal members in Southeast Alaska are also part of the management picture, because federal law preserves subsistence harvest and traditional handicraft uses of sea otters, practices that depend on how the population and the local ecosystem fare.

The Juneau proposal is one piece of a broader Alaska pattern in which developers seek incidental harassment authorizations for pile driving while federal wildlife managers impose mitigation to limit disturbance to protected marine mammals. The Service has a separate pending proposal that would let the City of Unalaska injure or disturb up to 112 threatened Southwest Alaska sea otters during a year of pile driving at Robert Storrs Harbor. In March, it finalized regulations allowing nonlethal incidental harassment of northern sea otters for marine construction in Seward, Sitka and Kodiak. On the fisheries side, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued an authorization to Turnagain Marine Construction for the Aak'w Landing Development Project in Juneau on July 20, issued one to Coeur Alaska for the Kensington Dock repair in Berners Bay in June, and has proposed two consecutive authorizations for Turnagain's Douglas Island cruise ship terminal near Juneau.