Your question is at what point do we give up on a population? The Stilly, when listed, was probably in better shape. Decisions made by all involved agencies, whether natural resource managers or land use managers or planners all had a hand.

By "going slow" events have conspired to put the Stilly in a real hole. Take the Southern Resident Killer Whales. They are starving and aborting fetuses. So, old ones die and no new ones come in. In a few more years, recovery will be moot. If we diddle around, close some areas to boating, let the pinnipeds continue to increase and we won't have to worry about the whales. Same with salmon. We allow more growth, the Sound has issues, and it pretty soon will become impossible for the salmon to live there.

We have tried the easy and cheap stuff. We either step up and seriously deal with the whole ecosystem's problems or we watch them disappear.