L87, a southern resident orca, breaches at sunset with Whidbey Island and Mt. Baker in the background.  (Susan Berta / Orca Network)

A far right anti-environmental group based in Sacramento, California is trying to get federal Endangered Species Act protections removed from a small extended west coast family group of killer whales.

This group of killer whales, or orcas, is known as the southern residents because they spend much of their time residing in coastal waters between Washington and Canada’s Vancouver island. They feed almost exclusively on salmon, which is indirectly what’s got them in trouble with the anti-environmental Pacific Legal Foundation. They eat salmon not only in Washington waters, but as far south as California when salmon mass there in the spring.

Federal regulators curtailed fresh water diversions to large agricultural operations in the desert on the west side of California’s San Joaquin Valley, in part to save the salmon eaten by the whales—both for the sake of the threatened salmon, and for the whales. The Pacific Legal Foundation and other anti-environment groups (including one headed by a former Bush Administration wildlife official) found a few irrigators there who were willing to ignore the needs of the orcas in order to get more water diverted.

Because these groups and the irrigators live more than a thousand miles from where the killer whales spend most of their time, no one should be surprised they aren’t all that concerned about the whales.

The last, valiant moments of a bait-filled sock, doing his part for science. (Courtesy of SNAMP)

Deep in California’s Sierra Nevada, a field biologist is preparing a delicacy favored by one of the most elusive hunters of the forest. The meal is known—literally—as “Chicken-in-a-Sock.”

The connoisseur is the imperiled Pacific fisher (Martes pennanti). The fur trade devastated the species (the fisher’s coat, no less splendid than that of his close relations, the wolverine and mink, was highly coveted), as did logging. Denning in large trees and rocky crevices and hunting through a sprawling home range, this solitary carnivore depends on undisturbed landscapes of old growth forests. Few still exist, and those that do are often fragmented by roads and other development.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chose a blue moon to announce the delisting of the gray wolf in Wyoming, which will take effect in one month. Is it because a blue moon is also called the “betrayer moon,” or perhaps it’s just before a holiday weekend and they are hoping most won’t notice?

By eliminating federal protections and handing wolf management over to Wyoming, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision will allow hunters, ranchers, wolf haters and anyone living or visiting Wyoming to commence unconditional wolf killing—without a license and by virtually any means in nearly 85 percent of the state. In the rest of the state, Wyoming will open up a hunting season on wolves immediately after it gains control.

If you were a false killer whale off the Hawaiian coast you’d probably be calling ocean 911 right about now on your underwater cell phone.

You’d frantically shout: “Hurry, send help now! Us false killer whales are being killed by longline fishing hooks!” And the ocean 911 operator would respond: “We have been receiving a lot of calls from you false killer whales and I’m going to tell you what I tell everyone else: you’re just going to have to sit tight and wait because the National Marine Fisheries Service is still figuring it out! Have a nice day and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Seriously, NMFS, what’s the deal? The agency said it would finalize its plan by last December to reduce the number of false killer whales dying at the hands of Hawai’i’s longline tuna fishery. Well, here we are at the start of July and still no final plan; the agency says it needs more time. But if you’re a false killer whale dodging longline hooks just to stay alive, excessive delay and bureaucratic hand-wringing is the last thing you need.