On Puget Sound, Wash. – Last month, the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed protecting most of Puget Sound as critical habitat for killer whales, which are actually the world’s largest dolphins.
The proposal, encompassing 2,564 square miles at the heart one of the nation’s busiest commercial waterways, has alarmed local industry.
Building and farm groups have sued to stop the proposal, due to become law by November, arguing that it would require complicated and costly review of future industrial development, home construction, sewer treatment, road construction and water use around the sound, an inland waterway surrounded by nearly 4 million people.
Russell Brooks, managing attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is leading the legal challenge, warns that the listing of killer whales as endangered could create unforeseen economic fallout in the Pacific Northwest comparable to what followed the listing of northern spotted owls in the early 1990s.
Then, 80 percent of federal forests from Washington to northern California were closed to logging and an estimated 30,000 timber industry jobs disappeared.
The spotted owl is still in severe decline, and scientists do not know how to save it.
“This is not really about killer whales at all,” said Brooks, whose group specializes in trying to rein in the economic impact of the Endangered Species Act. “This is a tool used by those who wish to impose their own version of non-land use on Puget Sound.”
But for champions of the orcas – and their numbers are growing, with an estimated 150,000 people paying about $70 each to go out every year in boats to watch the whales in Puget Sound – federal protection has been welcomed as an overdue gift.
“We are very, very happy about this,” said Ralph Munro, a former Washington secretary of state and a longtime activist who, like many ardent orca admirers, says he’s had “mystical” encounters with the creatures.
“I know it sounds kooky,” Munro, 63, said during a break at a hearing on the protection plan, “but I can show you 10 people in this room who have had mystical experiences with orcas.”
