Conservationists threaten lawsuit over orca protection

Associated Press

SEATTLE — A conservation group leading efforts to get three pods of Puget Sound orcas on the federal endangered species list is threatening to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to issue a ruling on time.

Under the Endangered Species Act, the government had until Thursday, a year after the listing petition was filed, to make a decision.

"By definition, endangered species don’t have time to waste, and the ESA’s mandatory deadlines are there to ensure that the fisheries service puts protections in place before it’s too late," Brent Plater, an attorney in the Berkeley, Calif., office of the Center for Biological Diversity, said Friday.

Federal law requires citizens to file 60-day notices of intent to sue before taking any legal action against the government.

Brian Gorman, spokesman for the fisheries service’s Seattle office, said he is "reasonably confident" the agency will make its decision within the next two months.

"It’s just tough," Gorman said. "We know the population of this southern resident group is falling. The numbers are clear. We’ve known for some time. We just don’t know why, and we don’t know precisely what the relationship is between the southern residents and the overall population."

To meet the federal standard, a species must be shown to be both geographically and genetically distinct, and those distinctions must be significant, Gorman said.

Conservationists say the declining numbers speak for themselves.

As of the end of the 2001 survey year, only 78 killer whales remained in the three pods that make up the southern resident population, which spends much of its time in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Washington’s inland waters.

That’s down 20 percent in the last six years alone. The population is believed to have peaked at around 120 whales in the early 1960s, Plater said.

While no one is sure exactly what is causing the decline, theories include industrial toxins that accumulate in the whales’ blubber, a dwindling supply of their main food source — salmon — and stress from whale-watching boats.

Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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