A prominent environmental group is calling for a federal investigation into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s alleged decapitation of a dead whale 30 years ago.
The Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund sent a letter to NOAA law enforcement officials Monday requesting an investigation into whether Kennedy — who last week suspended his independent campaign for president — violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Lacey Act when he reportedly sawed off the head of a beached whale in 1994 and transported it across state lines.
The alleged incident, first chronicled in a 2012 Town & Country magazine profile of his daughter Kick Kennedy, resurfaced over the weekend, raising the eyebrows of environmentalists as the latest in a string of bizarre revelations about the elder Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer and prominent advocate.
“Given Mr. Kennedy’s reckless disregard for the two most important marine conservation laws in the United States, we ask that NOAA consider all appropriate civil and criminal penalties,” Brett Hartl, national political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, wrote in the letter.
