In September 2021, a federal court ruled that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in its approval of continued commercial salmon harvesting in Southeast Alaska.
According to the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC), “On Monday, in response to a lawsuit filed by Wild Fish Conservancy, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michelle Peterson issued a report and recommendation finding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by relying on undeveloped and uncertain future mitigation to authorize commercial salmon harvest at levels that NOAA admits are pushing federally-protected Southern Resident orcas and wild Chinook closer to extinction.”
The ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought by (WFC), a radical environmentalist group based in Duvall, WA, which has been whipping up support to defend the orcas and the salmon against the interests of the fisheries, by pushing an emotional appeal that the orcas are “starving” and that one female orca, named “Tahlequah,” in particular, would be memorialized because of how it “grieved” for its dead baby calf, nosing the carcass around the sound for two weeks after it had died. One news reporter even went so far in her anthropomorphizing of the animal, that she wrote, “She was a mother who happened to be an orca, whose plight resonated around the world as she clung to her dead calf, refusing to let it go.”
At issue is the survival of fisheries in the region—some of which have been family businesses for over 120 years—which are now threatened by the ruling. An appeal is planned, but at this point, there are few details.
In the past, fisheries could harvest as much as they wanted, but after a series of federal court rulings and acts of Congress (the Endangered Species Act ESA, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act MMPA) over the last 35 years, have sharply curtailed what these fisheries can harvest. According to one fisherman’s estimate, “With access to our traditional areas (now prohibited), we could harvest our annual quota of Chinook (salmon) in two weeks!”
This is only a part of Alaska’s overall resistance to the Biden administration’s call for “30X30” – the plan to conserve at least 30% of the land and water by 2030. One estimate is that at least 620,000 square miles (roughly 1/5 the size of the continental US) is already protected as “marine sanctuaries” or “national monuments.”
The allegations of the threat of extinction of this community of orcas is questionable. ("The Southern Resident [Killer Whales](SRKW), which comprise the smallest of the ‘resident’ populations, are found mostly off British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, but also travel to forage widely along the outer coast,” according to mmc.gov.) These in particular feed primarily on Chinook salmon, but disperse in the fall and winter, feeding on other species of fish as well. The population is estimated to be 75 animals, but in 1974, the population had fallen to a similar range, and there wasn’t a peep from the environmentalists. According to one report in usnews.com, dated May 8, 2021, the pod was in its “best condition in a decade.” The reasons for the fluctuation in this pod’s population is currently unknown, but under further research.
As one fisherman lamented, “I am haunted by the sad fact that people are so moved by the death of a single Orca but are indifferent to the imminent starvation of millions of humans.”
