In 2008 a US federal court judge ruled that the Defense Department’s plans to construct an offshore marine airbase on the island of Okinawa, Japan contravened the US National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (Tanji 2008). The rationale for the court’s decision, known as Dugong v. Gates, was that construction plans for the base failed to protect the dugong, one of the animals that are the subjects of this book. The dugong is listed as critically endangered by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment and as a National Monument on the Japanese Register of Cultural Properties because of its high cultural value to the people of Okinawa. In 2005 a companion court case (Dugong v. Rumsfeld) had established the legitimacy of declaring an animal to be a historically significant ‘property’ under US legislation, ensuring that the US National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 applied.

The outcome of these court cases does not guarantee the future of the dugong in Japan, where it is subject to multiple threats in addition to the airbase (Marsh et al. 2002; Ikeda and Mukai 2012; Chapter 8). Indeed, the court decision seems unlikely to prevent the construction of the airbase.