July 14, 2025 — Efforts to save the Northwest’s endangered orcas are not working on either side of the U.S.-Canada border, according to an international panel of scientists.
In a new report, the panel of 31 researchers call for bolder measures to bring the endangered whales back from the brink of extinction.
The whale experts say these orcas urgently need comprehensive action for quiet, clean, salmon-rich waters.
“It’s a declining population, and it’s a population that we predict will be declining for a generation or two, and then that decline will accelerate rapidly towards extinction if we don’t turn this around quickly,” said Rob Williams, chief scientist with the nonprofit Oceans Initiative in Seattle and one of the report’s coauthors.
The salmon-eating orcas, known as southern resident killer whales, were declared an endangered species in Canada in 2001 and in the United States in 2005.