"Considering that we know we've got to work [with NMFS] down the road, I'd say that sort of adversarial encounter is unlikely. The last thing we want to do is alienate the American government and lose any semblance of cooperation for the tasks ahead."
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FRED FELLEMAN
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How, then, can the southern resident orcas receive the kind of attention and protection afforded to Springer? Within hours of the NMFS decision, Plater and his colleagues at the Center for Biological Diversity had filed a lawsuit against the government, an action that will force further review. The next day, Pam Johnson, field director at People for Puget Sound, held a press conference at Myrtle Edwards Park during which she outlined steps for a calculated backdoor attack to gain the local orca pods a chance at survival.
Johnson's strategy assumes that if the federal government won't grant southern residents the protection and funding they need to survive, perhaps the state government will. Her approach hinges on lobbying Gov. Gary Locke and state representatives to appropriate emergency funding for research to show that the whales are genetically unique. It also includes calls for increased efforts to clean up Puget Sound's Superfund sites and a formal request for a rescue tugboat to help prevent oil spills in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
"These are small steps the state can take to give the orcas a fighting chance," Johnson says. "If we are in the business of saving whales, someone has to be putting money, resources, and energy into this [dwindling] population."
Other environmental groups have vowed to wage other battles. At the Surfrider Foundation in Friday Harbor, regional coordinator Kevin Ranker says he hopes to continue lobbying for tighter enforcement of the Shorelines Management Act of 2000, a law designed to protect the habitats of the fish orcas eat that has been paralyzed by lawsuits. At Friends of the San Juans, also in Friday Harbor, executive director Stephanie Buffum says she plans to redouble efforts to research toxins in the Puget Sound food web, studying pollutants in fish as tiny as smelt and sand lance, which serve as meals for many of the salmon that local orcas eat.
Dr. David Bain, an affiliate assistant professor in UW's psychology department, plans to stage a public relations campaign that publicizes environmental efforts. Bain masterminded the Orca Recovery Conference in June and says he and co-coordinator Will Anderson already are planning a follow-up conference for sometime early next year to further explore issues such as whale-watch interference, orca genetics, and the movement to tear down the Elwha Dam.
"There are countless issues in and around the Sound that affect our southern residents," he notes. "As far as we see it, especially after it seems everyone's attention has been diverted to A-73, you can never talk or raise awareness about them too much."
Experts at NMFS have said that the government plans to conduct further research and re-evaluate its decision about ESA protection in 2006. And already, Dahlheim admits, members of the Biological Review Team have begun considering data they didn't have during their first assessment. This process, however, may be nothing more than a formality—never in the ESA's history has the government reversed a previous decision not to protect.
Whatever happens, as environmentalists and lawmakers wrangle over ways to address the dwindling numbers of southern resident orcas, former Secretary of State Ralph Munro says it's important for every Puget Sound resident to rally around the whales the way they rallied around Springer. Munro led the fight in the 1970s to stop the capture of orcas for commercial purposes in Puget Sound; for him, the survival of the southern residents is an issue of local pride. From the porch of his house on San Juan Island overlooking Haro Strait, Munro says the orcas are an integral and irreplaceable part of local culture; in losing them, he states, we'd lose a bit of ourselves, as well.
"Through all of this, we must remember that dating back to the Indians, these whales are a part of everything that is the Northwest," says Munro. "I only hope we can save them before it's too late."
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