The US Navy since its formation around 75 years back has started carrying out several war games in a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian and California coasts. Conservationists have often sought to restrict its use of bombs and sonar that harms marine mammals. And now under a rare decision Navy has agreed to make settlement with the conservation groups.

The settlement announced this week was startling. Talks on the settlement started back in April after the US District Court Judge Susan Oki Mollway in Hawaii sided against the Navy and its claim that it couldn't avoid sensitive whale habitat while conducting its exercises.

Navy's activities would include dropping a quarter-million explosives in the Pacific and blasting sonar for half a million hours during five years of war games that started in January.

As a result of the negotiation with the two plaintiffs, Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Navy has agreed that from now on it will respect buffer zones around whale and dolphin habitat off both coasts at times when the animals congregate to forage, mate and raise calves.

The conservationists argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, failed to investigate possible alternatives that could result in less harm to animals.

Mollway in her decision called the navy's dismissal of pleas to avoid whale and dolphin habitat because it was inconvenient to their plans 'impractical'. The Navy's repeated reliance on sweeping, absolute statements that allow for no possibility of any restriction at all is deficient, the judge wrote.