In the article I read, NMFS Regional Administrator Barry Thom said, "it's not too late." Unfortunately I think he is wrong.

The actions that can be taken right away or in the near term would result in small incremental benefits to the southern resident orcas. I doubt that is enough to prevent further population decline. And of the near term actions that can be taken, lip service will be the most prominent one, whereas actions that could make a significant difference will have too high a social and economic cost to the movers and shakers who control actions government agencies actually take.

The near term actions are mostly of the type that would treat symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem; the root cause being degraded habitat that produces too few Chinook to adequately feed orcas throughout the year. Restoring PS freshwater and marine habitat to produce adequate forage for orcas will take a longer time than the whales likely have remaining. And that amount of habitat restoration is extremely unlikely to ever happen anyway, given the other over-riding priorities of society, which mainly are the development of the PS area to accommodate the Californication of western WA.

Sorry to be so pessimistic about the whales and Chinook restoration and recovery, but if society and the state and federal agencies really want to feed Chinook salmon to the orcas for the next 50 years or more, it will have to be with hatchery Chinook because the natural habitat simply cannot and will not produce the abundance and diversity of forage the whales need.

Sg