SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS )  -- Environmental groups are hailing a legal settlement they hope will lead to stronger protections for thousands of imperiled sea turtles.

The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco in May, and it concerns endangered leatherback sea turtles.

These sea turtle swim 6,000 miles across the ocean from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in order to gorge themselves on jellyfish along our coast," says Teri Shore, the program director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network.

It's one of three conservation groups that in 2007 petitioned the government to declare a broad swath of ocean off the California and Oregon coasts to be “critical habitat” for the leatherback turtle..

When the federal government failed to respond to the groups’ petition.. they filed suit to prompt action and that, says Shore, is just what this settlement calls for.

"The government must officially respond to the petition analyzing the science and decide whether critical habitat, indeed, needs to be established," said Shore.

The government must respond no later than December 4th. As part of the settlement, government officials also agreed to decide by February 19th whether two populations of loggerhead sea turtles should be listed as endangered rather than threatened.

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