Orcas were region's first pioneers

Last week was the Pioneer Picnic honoring the Valley’s first European settlers. This weekend is Swinomish Days, a tribal celebration that gathers natives from states regionally. Three Swinomish canoe families are back from this year’s canoe journey, the “Pull to Puyalluip.” Some 110 canoe families, from as far away as Alaska and the Columbia River, participated.

And, in late July, in the space of one day, an orca was born and died in the south Salish Sea.

The orcas were here first. In our complex ecosystem, the three southern orca pods are the keystone animal. They are the defining, iconic brand of our region. And before our eyes we are watching them wither and die.

Tahlequah, Orca J-35, has gained the attention of the world. This grieving mother also became a symbol and a challenge. “Will the sad spectacle of a mother orca clinging to her dead calf day after day and the urgent decline of a dying 4-year-old in her same family spark real action to save a species from extinction, or will it just be more business as usual?” Seattle Times environmental reporter Lynda Mapes ask in her Sunday lead of this ongoing front-page saga.

In the last three years, not a single orca calf has survived. The projection is a four-year-old may not. Tahlequah may not. Persistently hungry already, her self-imposed stress may kill her, death by grief.

Colin Dwyer closed his NRP piece a week ago quoting Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research:

“She’s telling the story far better than I can that these whales are in trouble,” he says. “It’s a message. These are pretty amazing animals. They know they’re being watched, they know what’s going on and they know that there’s not enough food. And maybe they know that we have something to do with it.”

For the most part, most of us go blithely on our way. It has hardly rained since mid-April; the region’s forest fire season has started early and for the second year in a row there is a state wide burn ban on public lands. From coast to coast the news is of fires, floods and deaths. If few hurricanes develop this summer, what will we do besides breathe a sigh of relief? And if it is a hurricane season full of disasters, what will we do besides send donations and talk about it?

My generation popularized the term “think globally and act locally.” That’s a slogan, mere words, unless we act. Act? We need to change our ways.

A bag ban is hardly a start. (Thank your town council for moving forward). Banning straws will be a small step, as significant as an individual straw is large.

Will the Pioneers’ legacy be like Julius Caesar’s: “I came, I saw, I conquered?” The little known last line is “I perished.”

Best to measure legacies in Earth time, in biological and geological scales and not generations of humans.

We have three choices, for the orcas and the rest of us. We can say, “We couldn’t figure it out:” The problem was too tough to solve. Or we can say “We would not figure it out;” We were too stubborn to change.

The way to a sustainable future is also open to us: “We changed:” We did figure it out.

As in any relationship, it is not all about us.

Will we figure that out?

Here is one specific way to get involved, right now, this summer. Initiative 1631 is headed for the ballot. Voting for it is not enough. Throughout the spring some of your neighbors spent shifts petitioning, getting signatures, one at a time. Best we all volunteer and, if we have children of any age, bring them with us, as we go door to door in Anacortes and Mount Vernon, this region’s population centers, talking to our neighbors, which they are, informing them of the need to tax carbon and asking them to vote for 1631, a small step that might help us survive as a species.