Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sawed the Head Off a Whale and Drove It Home, Daughter Says

It is a violation of longstanding federal law to collect parts from the carcass of a protected marine animal if there are still “soft tissues” attached.

It becomes political intrigue if the collector was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the severed head of a possibly protected marine mammal streamed “whale juice” down the side of the family minivan three decades ago.

On Monday, the political arm of the Center for Biological Diversity, a progressive environmental organization, called on federal authorities to investigate an episode, recounted by Mr. Kennedy’s daughter in a 2012 magazine article, in which she said Mr. Kennedy chain-sawed the head off a dead whale on a Massachusetts beach, bungee-corded it to their vehicle’s roof, and drove it five hours to the family home in Mount Kisco, N.Y.

“It was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick Kennedy, then 24, told Town & Country, in the article. The story recently resurfaced, including in an entertainment publication, The Wrap, on Sunday and in a New York Post article on Monday.

In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees marine protection, Brett Hartl, the national political director for the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, wrote: “There are good reasons why it is illegal for any person to collect or keep parts of any endangered species.”

“Most importantly, vital research opportunities are lost when individuals scavenge a wildlife carcass and interfere with the work of scientists. This is particularly true of marine mammals, which are some of the most difficult wildlife species in the world to study.”