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.

A patchwork of projects and regulations since then has failed to boost their numbers.

“Whatever it is we’re doing, collectively, cumulatively, is not enough. The population is still declining,” Williams said. “The whales need more salmon and less noise, and we need to somehow reduce the impact of toxic chemicals on the whales’ health and reproduction.”

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Noise can prevent orcas from finding the salmon they hunt using echolocation.

Many cargo ships have voluntarily slowed down in recent years to make less noise in orca waters, and regulations in Washington state in 2025 widened the space boaters are required to give the whales to 1,000 yards. Canadian officials are considering requiring boats to stay 1,000 meters (1,094 yards) away.

Over the past three years, a majority of big ships have voluntarily reduced their speeds in some shipping lanes near the Washington-British Columbia border, with cruise ships, vehicle carriers, and container ships slowing to 14.5 knots (17 miles per hour) and oil tankers and bulk carriers slowing to 11 knots (13 miles per hour).

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But the scientists say big ships need to further decelerate, to 11 knots, and over wider areas where orcas often forage.

The scientists are also calling for noise standards to be introduced to make the loudest ships quieter.

“We do that with cars and mufflers. We do that with motorcycles. We put limits on how noisy any one activity can be, and ships should be no different,” Williams said.

Ships’ noise output is currently unregulated.

“Legislating something like this at the state level (I’m assuming) would be challenging at best,” Patrick Gallagher, head of the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, a maritime-industry trade association that tracks vessel traffic, said in an email.

“I can tell this type of recommendation is being crafted by people who don’t work in this industry because it seems like an oversimplified, localized solution.”

The scientists’ list of actions needed to let the orcas population recover grew out of a three-day science workshop in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March, organized by the Vancouver Island-based Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

“The threats are well known, the science is clear, and we know what needs to be done,” Raincoast Conservation Foundation scientist Lance Barrett-Lennard said in a press release.

The orcas’ population and the health of surviving members have both been trending the wrong way.

Drone images of southern residents taken between July and November 2024 revealed that 22 out of 73 orcas were in “poor body condition,” researchers’ term for whales that are exceptionally thin.

It was the highest number of skinny orcas that researchers had detected in 17 years of analyzing the whales’ shapes from aerial photos.

“They just aren’t getting the energy, the caloric intake, they need,” said Holly Fearnbach, marine mammal research director with the Washington nonprofit Sealife Response, Rehabilitation, and Research.

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Fearnbach said summer and fall are usually the orcas’ best months. Their body conditions deteriorate in winter and spring, when meals of large, fatty Chinook are especially hard to find.

The researchers called for restrictions on fisheries that target Chinook salmon returning in spring and early summer to Canada’s Fraser River, just north of the U.S.-Canada border, and other spawning grounds, so that orcas can have adequate food supplies year-round.

“We have not had time to review the recommendations to the point of commenting on them,” spokesperson Michael Milstein with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages orcas and salmon, said in an email.

The Trump administration has cut NOAA’s funding and staff and is proposing deeper cuts.

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“It’s certainly devastating to see the cuts in funding, the cuts in positions, both for science, for management, for regulation, for oil spill response,” Williams said. “It’s really bad news for the whales.”

The White House is proposing to move all of NOAA’s work on marine mammals and endangered species to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The branch of the Fish and Wildlife Service that manages endangered species would face both an increased workload and a 21% budget cut under the Trump proposal.

John Ryan is a reporter with KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/12/northwest-orcas-conservation-report/