Canada’s government needs to use an Emergency Order to prevent extinction of Southern Resident killer whales
In May of 2024, Raincoast, along with five other conservation groups (David Suzuki Foundation, Georgia Strait Alliance, Living Oceans, Natural Resources Defense Council, and World Wildlife Fund Canada) filed a petition calling on Ottawa to implement an emergency order.
Southern Residents are a small population of salmon-eating killer whales that reside in the coastal waters of southern BC and the US west coast. They are long lived animals with low reproductive rates. In the 1960s and 70’s their numbers were dramatically reduced after dozens of individuals were captured and sold to aquariums.
Over the next 20-30 years their numbers slowly climbed up towards 100, but then the population experienced a 25% decline through the late 1990’s that corresponded with a decline in Chinook salmon, their preferred food source. The Southern Resident population was listed as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act in 2002.
There are three primary threats to their survival 1) lack of their preferred prey: larger, older Chinook salmon, 2) underwater acoustic and physical disturbance from vessels; and 3) environmental contamination acquired through the food they eat. Each of these threats limits or undermines the recovery of the population. Other threats, like oil spills, have the potential to make large parts of their critical habitat uninhabitable for extended periods of time.
Recent viability analysis of the Southern Resident population explored these three well documented threats. It found that over the next 100 years, the population will likely decline between 1% -2% annually under the current conditions in the Salish Sea and their coastal waters. While initially slow, this rate of decline increases after two generations (about 40 years), a pattern typical of populations headed towards extinction.
In May of 2024, Raincoast, along with five other conservation groups (David Suzuki Foundation, Georgia Strait Alliance, Living Oceans, Natural Resources Defense Council, and World Wildlife Fund Canada) filed a petition with the federal government to implement an emergency order. An Emergency Order is a mechanism that allows Ottawa to intervene when there are imminent threats to species at risk, to protect them from threats to their survival and recovery.
Ecojustice, the legal team that represents our groups, sent the petition (PDF) to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister of Environment and Climate Change, requesting the ministers recommend to Cabinet the use of an emergency order under the Species at Risk Act (SARA) to protect the population of only 74 whales.
The emergency measures required
The emergency measures proposed by the groups include:
- Implement a series of measures to reduce noise and disturbance from vessels traveling in or near Southern Resident foraging areas. Key actions include expanding the current 200-meters vessel distance buffer to 1,000 metres to harmonize with Washington State legislation, requiring quiet vessel notations for tankers serving the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) terminal, and developing, adopting, and implementing meaningful underwater noise reduction targets.
- Implement prey management strategies to ensure access to and rebuilding of Chinook salmon. Key actions include establishing an emergency management plan for Chinook fisheries that contains minimum thresholds for Chinook abundance, limiting the total fishing-related mortality of at-risk early Fraser River Chinook salmon to less than five per cent, transitioning marine mixed stock fisheries to river based terminal areas, and establishing an emergency drought management plan.
- Implement measures to increase wild Chinook salmon accessibility for Southern Residents, including extending the period of existing fishing closures in key foraging areas.
- Prohibit further increases of shipping from new, federally-approved, industrial projects in the Salish Sea until a cumulative effects management plan that addresses underwater noise, as promised by the government when it approved TMX, is in place.
- Prohibit discharge of scrubber wastewater, bilge and greywater from any vessel in or near the habitat of the Southern Residents.
The groups contend that the requested emergency measures are urgently required given that the conditions Southern Residents need to recover have not been attained, and time is running out.
The seasonal measures for Southern Residents announced by the government on Monday are largely a continuation of similar measures from previous years. These measures have not sufficiently reduced threats to a level conducive to recovery. In addition, the Southern Residents are now facing additional threats from TMX tanker traffic, more shipping traffic from Roberts Bank shipping expansion, and other actions that also destroy their critical habitat.
When the federal government approved the TMX in 2019, it promised to implement 16 recommendations from the Canada Energy Regulator to help address the additional vessel noise and oil spill risk posed by TMX. It previously committed to “more than mitigate” the impacts before shipping began. So far, the government has failed to do so, even as oil tankers began sailing in May.
An emergency order is the most urgent lever available to ensure that government acts quickly to address the threats of underwater noise and disturbance to Southern Residents, which are now being exacerbated by the 7-fold increase in tanker traffic from TMX in their critical habitat.
The groups say that the federal government must recommend an emergency order to give these killer whales protection from imminent threats to their survival and create conditions for their recovery.
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