California water plan could help Puget Sound orcas survive

From the Bellingham Herald (Washington state):

A plan to restore salmon runs on California’s Sacramento River could help revive killer whale populations 700 miles to the north in Puget Sound, as federal scientists struggle to protect endangered species in a complex ecosystem that stretches along the Pacific coast from California to Alaska.

Without wild salmon from the Sacramento and American rivers as part of their diet, the killer whales might face extinction. That’s what scientists concluded in a biological opinion that could result in even more severe water restrictions for farmers in the drought-stricken, 400-mile long Central Valley of California. The valley is the nation’s most productive farm region.

The plan has faced heated criticism from agricultural interests and politicians in California, but environmentalists said it represented a welcome departure by the Obama administration from its predecessor in dealing with Endangered Species Act issues.

The Sacramento plan, they add, represents a sharp contrast to the plan for restoring wild salmon populations on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Washington and Idaho. That plan, written by the Bush administration, essentially concluded that the long-term decline in those federally protected runs did not jeopardize the killer whales’ existence, because hatchery fish could make up the difference.

Read the rest of this article from The Bellingham Herald by clicking here.

Picture credit: Photo of Puget Sound and Mount Baker by flickr photographer sea turtle.

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