Group To Challenge Orca Protection

Saturday, January 28, 2006
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – Before the practical effect of the federal decision to list the region’s orcas as an endangered species has even been outlined, the Building Industry Association of Washington is challenging the November listing.

The region’s orcas don’t qualify for federal protection, the BIAW said in filing a 60-day notice of its intention to sue the government over the Endangered Species Act listing.

“It’s an unlawful listing,” Tim Harris, a lawyer with the group, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for a Friday report.

Puget Sound pods

The National Marine Fisheries Service announced last year that the three orca pods that frequent Puget Sound and the state’s other Northwest inland waters are at risk of extinction and warrant protection. Environmental activists had fought for the listing for years.

The BIAW, which works to limit taxes and regulations, is concerned that the listing will increase restrictions on the development and use of property on or near Puget Sound.

The notice notes there are other orca populations in Alaska, the Bering Sea and Russia.

“You can almost say any individual school of fish can be listed,” Harris said.

‘A distinct population’

NOAA originally agreed, but after court challenges and further scientific research, it determined local orcas were unique.

“There is no question that it is a distinct population,” said NMFS spokesman Brian Gorman in Seattle.

The local orcas breed only within their group, have unique behavioral traits and language and are genetically distinct.

The local population currently numbers 89, down from an estimated high of at least 125 before wholesale captures in the 1960s and ’70s for display in marine parks. Such captures were banned in the ’70s.

The orcas decline is blamed on dwindling salmon stocks — their diet staple — industrial contamination, growing human population and noise pollution from heavy vessel traffic. There also are growing concerns about disturbance by whale-watching vessels.

Source: The Olympian