Orca habitat protection a "duty".

[Foxsea]

The case stems from the plight of southern B.C.'s iconic marine mammal. At last count, there were 87 animals left in the southern orca population that lives in and around Vancouver Island and the Southern Gulf Islands. The group was listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act in 2003. Fisheries and Oceans came up with a plan to protect the whales and their critical habitat, but left certain elements up to the discretion of the minister.

The court said all elements of the plan must be enshrined in law. That would mean protecting chinook salmon, the whales' main food source, reducing underwater noise from boat, industrial and military activity and cleaning up toxic contamination in the whales' home ecosystem.The federal minister of fisheries has no discretion when it comes to protecting the critical habitat of B.C.'s southern resident killer whales, the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled. The precedent-setting case relates to the Species at Risk Act (SARA).

"We are thrilled with the court's decision and we now look forward to the opportunity to get on with the work of actually protecting the whales," remarked Margot Venton, a lawyer with Ecojustice, an environmental law firm that fought the case on behalf of nine environmental groups.

The court ruling could cause problems for B.C.'s sport fishermen. A large part of the whale's diet is chinook salmon and some of those fish may have to be set aside for the whales. "The need to ensure that killer whales have an adequate diet is a tricky issue," said Gerry Kristianson, chair of the Sport Fishing Advisory Board and a Pacific salmon commissioner. He argues that reducing the sport harvest of chinook doesn't mean that orcas will necessarily benefit. But Kristianson said he wasn't surprised by the court's decision and he expressed sympathy for the federal department.

On the other hand, commercial fishermen are happy with the decision. "There are a lot of things that we would need to be doing to protect killer whales that would affect other areas of the sea," said David Lane, the environment director for the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union. Lane said dealing with pollution in the southern resident orcas' home would benefit all species in the area. Chinook salmon is not a commercial fish species.

In a statement issued Friday, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans said it would not comment until it had completed a review of the decision. Fisheries and Oceans can seek leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

[Seafever]

87 fish-eating whales left......but the transient whales are doing very well, in and around the island.

When all the salmon runs have gone through......these fish-eaters spend the fall, winter,early spring eating resident "feeders"??...... don't think there'd be enough feeders around at these times to support a large whale population anyway.

The whales are feeding in the summer at the same time sporties and others are catching Chinook.

We all know that these whales have no fear of ripping right through sport boats and catching Chinooks with wild abandon. They have no fear of sporties or sporty fishing methods.

In fact the relationship is sometimes "symbiotic".......the whales will home-in on where they see sport boats fishing...or any other boat that's fishing for that matter.

So the whales, when they go through, will slow down the sport catch for an hour or two.
Which means there are Chinook for them to eat, because the fishing picks up after the whales leave.

So maybe the whales need to improve their skills at catching fish.

There are Orcas all up and down the west coast of North /Mid/ Southern America.......doing quite well. If one has ever watched any documentary footage of Orcas all over world...it is quite clear they are extremely intelligent animals, very adept at figuring out how to catch their dinner.

The fact that we have this little pod of 87 that eats nothing but Chinook........seems like some kind of anomaly. Unable to fend for themselves (unlike other Orcas), they come off like the "Kid from Deliverance" in the whale world.

Nature,when left to it's own devices, is highly cyclical. There are years of abundance....then times of not.

Herring have to eat too......if their food source is not around for any reason at all....then the cycle reacts accordingly. The less herring...the less salmon.
The factors that determine herring survivability ought to be seriously looked at.

There was another study done in Washington a while back that said cutting back the sportcatch of Chinook would probably not make any difference to southern Orcas. In light of the fact ,that before that, they said the whales could not reproduce because toxins were affecting their reproductive organs....well.....it seems like the "buck-passing" continues.


Current excuses for decling salmon stocks:-

Global warming
Freshwater run-off extremes
PCBs' and toxins in water
Over-logging and destruction to water shed habitat.
Agricultural chemical runoff
Overfishing by First Nations
Overfishing by Commercials
Overfishing by Sporties
Overfishing of herring
Fish farms
Viruses from non-native species
Lack of DFO management
Over development of urban areas
Political agendas putting corporate interests ahead of the environment
Reduction of hatchery production
Over-retention of brood stock
Perceived over-abundance of seals and sealions

If you or I had lived here in 1850.....I doubt any of this would have been a factor.


It may be my duty to protect what I am able to the extent of my ability....


It is not my duty to be a gullible dork and have the wool pulled over my eyes by
those that want to further corporate/political interests by foisting some 'drive-by"
Mc-Science down my gizzard.

Politics and the justice system are identical in that "fact" has nothing to do with it.

You merely have to convince a number of people (as in a courtroom), that what is said was correct. If the jury buys it.....you win. Truth may come up much later on.

In the case of government.....it seems it is their duty to make sure the truth never comes up at all cost.

[Englishman]

Well, this ruling could be good, over the long term, if you believe the glass is half full and not half empty. If the government is forced to address even half the environmental factors that Seafever lists, then that could be a good thing. More fish for the Orcas and a cleaner habitat benefits all.

Yes, there are natural cycles as Seafever suggests but these pale into insiginificance compared to the impact of man. Farley Mowat wrote a book called Sea of Slaughter, about the incedible abundance of the East coast before industrial levels of fishing and development virtually extinguished that productivity. I'm sure the same story could be written about the West coast...well in fact that story is there in the Cannery history of the coast from Steveston to the Alaska panhandle. To look at the huge piles of salmon on the cannery docks in the old black and white photos is quite an education. Then there was the human development caused Hells Gate slide in 1913 that decimated the sockeye and other salmon stocks, an abundance level to which they have never returned. Either way, the seals and Orca's did not eat all those fish. People did!!