Tribes and orcas have a lot in common. Together, we have always depended on the salmon for food.
The last 100 years have been hard on the tribes, the orcas and the salmon. Habitat loss and damage has pushed some salmon populations to the edge of extinction, threatening the orcas, tribal cultures and our treaty rights.
But instead of looking at the main causes for a weak local population of orcas, the federal government is asking us yet again to reconsider how we fish. We just spent several years working with our salmon co-managers to develop a five-year plan to manage our Puget Sound chinook fisheries in light of the recovery needs for fish listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Now, a half-step away from final approval, the federal government is asking us to go back to the drawing board and quickly produce a new two-year harvest plan that addresses how our fisheries might affect orca populations.
The state and tribal co-managers have been driving down impacts from treaty and non-treaty fisheries for decades in response to declining salmon runs caused by lost and damaged habitat. Our harvest levels have dropped to the point that harvest reductions alone can no longer recover salmon. Impacts caused by development, pollution and other factors have increased steadily and continue harming salmon 24 hours a day on every watershed.
Development and pollution are only a couple of factors that can hurt orca populations. Increasing ship traffic, military use of sonar and the growing popularity of whale watching all hurt orcas, increasing their stress levels and making it difficult for them to find food.
As our fishing impacts go down, those impacts go up, yet we’re the ones held accountable. Maybe developers, the U.S. Navy and whale watchers should be required come up with a plan to address how their actions over the next few years are going to affect orcas and salmon.
About 10 years ago, a pod of orcas visited Dyes Inlet in the Suquamish Tribe’s fishing area. The orcas were there for the same reason as tribal fishermen, to harvest chum salmon returning to Chico Creek. Despite a slow season, tribal fishermen stopped fishing to let the orcas get their fill.
Since then, the Suquamish Tribe has spent millions of dollars and countless hours restoring the Chico Creek watershed, making sure that there will be enough salmon for everyone to share. This is the kind of response we need to help orcas and salmon. Nothing else will do.
Asking the salmon co-managers to write a shorter-term harvest plan in the meantime won’t get us one inch closer to figuring out what we need to do to help orcas. It just puts us back on the plan-writing treadmill, ignoring the main causes and best solutions for the problems that we, the orcas and the salmon all face.
We know what salmon need and we know what orcas need. They need each other and they need us to help them survive. What’s good for one is good for the other and each one of us.
In the meantime, the federal government needs to stop holding fishermen responsible for something that we all know is caused by lost and damaged salmon habitat.
Billy Frank Jr. is the chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
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For more information, contact: Tony Meyer or Emmett O’Connell, NWIFC, (360) 438-118
