"In the 1960s and 70s, humans caused the decline of the southern resident orca whale population by capturing and trapping orcas behind walls of concrete"............ "Today, we continue to drive their decline by eliminating their main food source. Salmon from the Columbia basin"..........."Salmon makeup half of the southern resident orcas diet, and half of those fish come from the Snake River system"............."The salmon have themselves become threatened and endangered due to overfishing, habitat loss, and hydropower dams"................"For nearly two decades, conservation, tribal, and fishing groups have gone to court challenging federal agency plans that have spent over $16 billion of taxpayer money without recovering a single salmon population".............."With less than 30 breeding southern resident orcas remaining alive, and with 2/3rds of orca pregnancies failing due to starvation, we are on the brink of an ecological collapse"..............."In order to ensure the Whale's survival, the four lower Snake River Dams must be breached as soon as possible!"

https://www.facebook.com/PredDefense/posts/2432713516762782

Predator Defense

7/30/18

This grieving mother is a member of an endangered family of orca whales in the southern Puget Sound which is down to just 75 members. Every single pregnancy in the past three years has failed, primarily because the mothers do not have sufficient food, chinook salmon.

This is a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Countless studies have already been done. We don't need any more studies!!! We already know what to do. And you can help.

Please demand Governor Inslee, Washington and Oregon Senators, and the Army Corps of Engineers "JUST DO IT"-- breach the lower Snake River dams to free the salmon. Sign this petition and share with your friends and family.

https://actionnetwork.org/…/time-is-running-out-these-dams-…

In the article below, Deborah Giles, research scientist for University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology, said that this tragedy for the mother whale seems like a metaphor for a region stuck in its own grief over the declining whale population.

“She is stuck in a loop. We are stuck a loop, we are stuck in doing the same thing, expecting to get better results. What we need is going to be have to be massive, unheard of, unprecedented change in order to recover this population.”

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Click link below to see video of grieving Orca Whale with her dead calf
https://www.seattletimes.com/…/grieving-mother-orca-fallin…/

Puget Sound-Washington State