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Jan. 16, 2025 
By Lynda V. Mapes / Seattle Times environment reporter

This week, mother orca Tahlequah may have surpassed her 2018 tour of grief, when she carried her dead calf for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles.

Tahlequah was last seen still carrying her latest calf — dead since at least New Year’s Eve — on Jan. 10 off San Juan Island. That evening the southern resident family, part of J pod, headed west in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Tagging data and the acoustic records of the southern resident orcas’ vocalizations have revealed typical patterns for their seasonal foraging, said Brad Hanson, biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Once the orcas leave for the strait, it becomes difficult to pinpoint them. It helps to know the southern residents’ typical behavior this time of year to figure where they might be.

J pod is one of the southern residents’ three family groups. They typically hunt for Chinook returning to B.C.’s Fraser River in September, then in October and November transition to eating Puget Sound salmon, especially coho and chum. When those runs are passed by in December, K and L pods travel the outer coast, ranging as far south as California. J pod in winter is typically at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Tahlequah and the rest of her J pod crew also often travel back this way in winter, heading east in the straight then to the Strait of Georgia, almost to the Campbell River. But there’s no telling when or if that will happen.

But not knowing how she is — and whether she is still carrying the calf — is not the same thing as not caring.

“Tahlequah’s grief is heartbreaking,” poet Tim McNulty of Sequim wrote in an email. “The world shared her 17-day mourning for her last calf. Now she mourns again, away from our view. But Tahlequah’s grief transcends language and geographies. Maybe it strikes us so deeply because Tahlequah embodies a larger, unspoken grief for our own unraveling world.”

The southern residents are endangered, with only 73 members left. The main threats to their survival include lack of fish, especially Chinook salmon; pollution, which contaminates their food; and vessel noise that makes it harder for them to hunt. All of those threats are made worse by climate change, which is upending ocean food webs, depleting summer stream flows and warming stream temperatures. Those factors hurt salmon survival — and when salmon are scarce, the other threats the southern residents face are intensified.

Philosopher and author Kathleen Moore of Oregon State University said she witnesses Tahlequah’s second loss with a mix of awe and concern. “All I know is that grief is a measure of love,” Moore wrote in an email. “The greater the love, the more devastating the sorrow. If we had no love, we would feel no loss. This mother’s expression of grief is desperately dangerous. Can we infer that her baby means more to her than her own life itself? It’s a magnificent love that she carries.”

Julie Seitz of Federal Way followed Tahlequah’s journey in 2018. Today, the orca once again is in her thoughts and heart.

“She is a life,” she said of the baby orca Tahlequah lost. “We cared so much and the mother cared so much, when I think about her baby it brings tears to my eyes … I feel sad, I want to know how she is doing, I will feel sad in my heart until I hear more.

“I pray for her comfort and her healing.”

To her, Tahlequah’s mourning also is a gift to a human society in which grief can be awkward, rushed, even marginalized. When she lost two beloved elderly dogs, Seitz said she turned to art to comfort herself, making fabric urns for their ashes — a design she even patented. “It is beautiful to see people touched by this,” Seitz said of Tahlequah. “Maybe it helps us all expand our appreciation for grief, maybe the animals are teaching us.”

She wonders daily what is happening with Tahlequah and the calf. “Do the predators come? Do the other orcas feed her? We don’t know the answers.”

For some, a least a few answers are clear. “This is a call to action,” said Alyssa Macy, CEO of Washington Conservation Action and a citizen of the Confederates Tribes of Warm Springs. “In losing another calf she is showing us two-leggeds, we humans, that we have more work to do. That is what I took from that. She is not the first of her people to lose a calf, but she is the one consistently showing us and telling us … we have work to do.”

Many Coast Salish peoples regard the orcas as family relatives. “Think of them as the highly intelligent relatives that they are,” Macy said. “I don’t know how the calf died, but my guess is it just didn’t have enough food. How awful it would be to not have enough food for your child, and then to grieve that grief.

When she heard of Tahlequah’s second tour of grief, Lummi elder Raynell Morris floated a wreath of cedar and flowers on the waters of Puget Sound, offshore of an ancient Lummi Village at what today is called Cherry Point.

“I’ve been crying a lot, praying a lot,” Morris said. “As hurtful as it is, we can’t quit advocating. We are still doing the good work. Because that is what is given to us.”

For Rob Williams, chief scientist at Oceans Initiative, Tahlequah’s grief was up close and personal. On New Year’s Eve, he and his wife bundled their 10-year-old daughter into their research boat so she could come along as they took breath samples from the new baby for research. “We were taking our calf to see her calf,” he said. But as they approached, the parents quickly figured out, “that calf is dead,” Williams said. “It was: Get her to look the other way.”

Williams is lead author on a recent paper about the accelerating extinction risk for the southern residents looming in plain sight. How much more plain could that sight be? “This is hard as a scientist,” Williams said. “It is even harder as a dad. As a parent.” Especially a second time.

He puts it this way: If a Hollywood producer asked him to consult on a script in which a whale whose family was shattered and food taken away carried her dead calf for everyone to see, not once but twice, he would reject it as unbelievable, Williams said. “And yet, here we are.

“At some point you gotta admit, she is trying to tell you something.”

Seattle Times: Where is Tahlequah? What we know about the mother orca and her calf

Tahlequah, J35, carries her dead calf off Point Robinson, Vashon Island. The birth was confirmed on Christmas Eve, and the baby was confirmed dead on New Year’s Eve. She has been carrying the calf at least 11 days (Courtesy of Audrey Gao)Jan. 10, 2025
By Lynda V. Mapes

Mother orca Tahlequah is continuing to carry her burden of grief: a dead calf that she now has been refusing to let go of for at least 11 days.

Tahlequah is the orca whose story shocked the world in 2018 when she carried a calf that lived only half an hour for 17 days and more than 1,000 miles.

The orca and her family, the southern resident J pod, were seen in Haro Strait off San Juan Island on Friday morning before they headed west toward the ocean.

Tahlequah has two living sons. But this baby lived only a week. The birth was confirmed on Christmas Eve, and the baby was confirmed dead on New Year’s Eve. She has been carrying the calf at least since then, in what is understood by scientists to be an indication of grief.

Other animals including other species of dolphins are known to carry their deceased young, and other orcas have also been seen carrying young that did not survive.

The newest baby born to the endangered southern residents remains a ray of hope. J62 is doing well, said Michael Weiss, research director for the Center for Whale Research, who also confirmed the mother is J41.

Both mother and calf appeared to be doing fine, Weiss said.

“I’m cautiously optimistic about J62,” he said of the newest baby. “Though with these young whales, the first year is always challenging.”

J41 has two other offspring, a teenage male, J51, and a female, J58, born in 2020, Weiss said.

The southern residents are battling extinction, facing multiple threats, from lack of Chinook salmon, their preferred food, to vessel noise that makes it harder to hunt and pollution in their food.

All of those threats are made worse by climate change, which is upending ocean food webs, depleting summer stream flows and warming stream temperatures. Those factors hurt salmon survival — and when salmon are scarce, the other threats the southern residents face are intensified.

The loss of Tahlequah’s calf was a particularly hard one as that calf was a female. Some also worry about the toll it is taking on J35, or Tahlequah.

“If ever there has been an individual animal that has without a doubt demonstrated grief at the loss of an offspring it’s Tahlequah. And here she is doing it again,” said Deborah Giles, science and research director for the research nonprofit Wild Orca.

Every time the calf slides off her head, Tahlequah has to make the decision to dive down and pick it up again before the waves carry the calf away. Though the calf weighs hundreds of pounds, it is not the physical effort so much Giles worries about for such a strong animal but the toll it takes on J35 because she can’t forage when she’s carrying the calf, Giles said. She also worries about the orca’s mental health.

“This is really sad and scary to me,” Giles said. “She has this deep connection to her calves … all of our hearts and brains went to the possibility that she would do another tour of grief.

“And here she is. Well into it.”

Seattle Times: Mother orca Tahlequah still carries dead calf after 11 days

Dec. 31, 2024
By Lynda V. Mapes

In a day of sadness and surprise, researchers on Puget Sound on Tuesday found J61, the new calf born to mother orca Tahlequah, had not survived — and that a new calf also had been born to J pod.

Brad Hanson, biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, was on the water with other researchers for a health survey of the endangered southern resident orcas and confirmed the news.

Tahlequah’s new calf was especially important as it was a female. The birth also was of symbolic importance to the region. Tahlequah is the mother orca who carried her calf that lived only a half-hour in 2018 in a journey of more than 1,000 miles and 17 days, stirring grief around the world.

The mother and gender of the new calf is not yet confirmed.

Baby orcas always face long odds of survival. Tahlequah’s calf appeared to be having trouble from the start, with the mother often pushing her and carrying her and the baby not looking as lively as he might have expected, Hanson said, after getting a look at her last week.

The southern residents are the orcas that frequent Puget Sound. The families live in the J, K and L pods and are endangered, with only 73 orcas in the population.

They face numerous threats, including lack of salmon, especially Chinook; too much vessel noise and disturbance, which makes it harder for them to hunt; and pollution in their food.

It was a hard day for scientists who have followed the southern residents through their many difficulties and are working for their recovery.

“Three of the four of us had been on the boat last week and were all very concerned about its viability then,” Hanson wrote in an email about J61. “So while today’s observations didn’t come as a complete surprise, the general feeling was one of profound sadness, not only for J35 (Tahlequah) knowing her history, but also knowing what the loss of a female means to the potential for SRKW (southern resident killer whale) recovery.”

The Seattle Times: Orca Tahlequah’s new baby dies 

Differing interests battle over power vs. salmon as the question of the Snake River dams removal rises again

By Henry Brannan, Columbian Murrow News Fellow
Published: December 19, 2024, 1:30pm
Updated: December 19, 2024, 3:01pm

Federal agencies announced Thursday they will update the environmental guidelines that shape how they operate 14 dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

The move follows a decades long legal battle that Native nations, environmental advocates and fishing groups are fighting to get the government to take aggressive action on salmon recovery. A lot of that battle has focused on removing dams on Washington’s lower Snake River.

The fight came to a head in 2020 when federal agencies released the current guidelines for the federal system’s operations — known as the Columbia River Operating System Environmental Impact Statement — which came out against removing the four lower Snake River dams.

Environmental groups and others sued in response. Then, in late 2023, the lawsuits were paused in an agreement between federal agencies, the states of Washington and Oregon, environmental advocates, fishing groups, Native nations and the Biden administration.

That agreement required federal agencies to weigh if new guidelines were necessary. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation have now decided they are.

The guidelines at the center of this shape many crucial aspects of the Columbia River dams’ management — including how much water is used to generate hydroelectricity versus how much passes over spillways to help young salmon safely make it to the ocean.

Reactions

The move to pursue new guidelines sparked celebration among environmental and fishing advocates and condemnation from business interests that depend on a dammed lower Snake.

“At least four Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead stocks have already gone extinct and 13 others — including all four remaining Snake River stocks — are listed under the Endangered Species Act,” Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association Policy Director Liz Hamilton said in a statement.

“Revising (the guidelines) is the logical next step toward meaningful change that complies with the law and the needs of the fish,” she added.

Earthjustice attorney Amanda Goodin emphasized that avoiding regional salmon extinction is possible if the agencies commit to needed actions “including breaching the four lower Snake River dams and replacing their services.”

In a joint statement, powerful agriculture, shipping and hydropower interests highlighted the lower Snake dams’ significant role in the region’s economy and called the move to update the guidelines unlawful.

“The coalition contends that a new National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis would be both premature and unlawful, warning that it would be incomplete and could mislead the public about these dams’ vital role in supporting the region’s economy and environment,” their statement read.

Public Feedback

The next step in the process of updating the guidelines — known cumulatively as completing a supplemental environmental impact statement — is public feedback.

That will take the form of a 90-day public comment period, said Tom Conning, spokesman for the Corps, which operates 12 of the dams.

“The goal is really to get the public to be aware,” he said. “We’re trying to get the public to send comments to us for consideration.”

Conning said the comment process isn’t like voting, where the goal is to select the most popular ideas. Instead, it’s about people raising issues the agencies might not have considered to make sure the guidelines include as many factors and potential side effects as possible.

Next, the agencies will release a draft supplemental environmental impact statement, followed by another public comment period. The process will end when the agencies release the final supplemental environmental impact statement.

While it’s unclear how long the whole process will take, the more intensive 2020 review lasted just over four years.

Conflicting considerations

​​To produce the guidelines, the agencies will have to weigh two dozen interconnected factors — each with significant environmental, economic and social consequences across the roughly 260,000-square-mile Columbia River Basin. Any decision is bound to anger parties across the basin that will take the issue to the courts.

On one hand, hydropower is increasingly valuable because of massive increases in demand for electricity from the tech industry, especially data centers. That’s compounded by rising population in the Pacific Northwest and fast-approaching fossil fuel-free grid deadlines in Washington and Oregon.

The four lower Snake River dams produce about 5 percent of the region’s electricity — worth between $415 million and $860 million a year. They also allow grain barges to navigate to Lewiston, Idaho, moving 60 percent of Washington’s roughly $750 million in yearly wheat exports.

The overall cost of replacing the dams could be in the tens of billions of dollars each year, according to the Congressional Research Service — especially if the removal is accompanied by massive investment in hard-hit regions to offset the economic toll, which environmental groups and even a Republican congressman have argued for.

But the harmful impacts of the lower Snake dams on salmon are documented by a growing number of government reports, which show the dams are driving salmon extinction by blocking the fish from historic spawning grounds, favoring predators and other means.

Environmental research groups echo that, noting, “Since construction finished on these four dams in the 1970s, wild Snake River salmon populations have plummeted by more than 90 percent.”

Recent estimates show salmon returns to the Columbia have averaged about 2.3 million fish a year for the past decade — a fraction of the 10 million to 16 million that came before dams.

And that 2.3 million estimate doesn’t differentiate between wild and hatchery fish. A 2022 NOAA assessment found the number of wild salmon spawning in Columbia River tributaries declined substantially for nearly every salmon run in nearly every river they measured between 1990 and 2019.

Uncertain future

In addition to practical concerns, federal agencies must also navigate a minefield of political uncertainty caused by January’s transition in the presidential administration, as well as shifts in Congress.
Conning said that while every administration brings change, the agencies will not be changing course.

“We’re following federal laws to guide what we’re doing,” he said. “And we can’t really speculate on the incoming administration and next Congress, and what they might do.”

Republicans, who will control the presidency and both the chambers of Congress starting in January, have opposed Snake River dam removal.

During his first term, former and future President Donald Trump showed a clear preference for cutting environmental protections for fish and ecosystems, instead increasing the amount of river water available across the West for farming. He doubled down on that stance while campaigning last summer, The Columbian reported in October.

Whatever the agencies decide on Snake River dam removal, the issue will ultimately have to be decided by Congress.

It’s unclear how negotiations on the Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada — and a stopgap agreement between the two countries on hydropower generation and flood control — might shape the agencies’ choices.

Public comments on the update can be left at www.nwd.usace.army.mil/columbiariver. The Corps and Reclamation will hold at least three virtual public meetings the week of Feb. 10.

The Columbian: ‘Unlawful’ or ‘a critical next step’? Feds to update Columbia River dams’ environmental guidelines

@ EcoFlight

Dec 1, 2024
By Henry Brannan/The Columbian

A trio of federal agencies are considering pursuing additional environmental guidelines for the Columbia River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation are conducting the review to comply with an agreement reached late last year after litigation by regional Native nations and environmental groups.

Environmental groups and tribes are hoping the agencies will recommend the removal of Snake River dams, which seemed likely only a few years ago. But, with Republicans set to control Congress and the White House in less than two months, it’s unclear what will happen.

The guidelines at the center of the debate are collectively called the Columbia River System Operations Environmental Impact Statement.

Despite the dense, bureaucratic name, the document is important because it shapes crucial aspects of the Columbia River’s management — including how much water dams use to generate hydroelectricity versus how much passes over spillways to help young salmon safely make it to the ocean. The federal agencies began work on the current environmental impact statement in 2016 and finalized it in 2020.

Groups had anticipated the 2020 environmental impact statement would settle the conflict over four dams on the Lower Snake River. They produce about 5% of the region’s electricity but contribute to salmon’s struggles by preventing endangered fish from reaching historic spawning grounds.

However, the 2020 document did not recommend their removal. Native nations and environmental groups sued.

The recent litigation came after more than three decades of legal battles over the government’s efforts to save endangered salmon runs, which environmental groups argue are inadequate.

Following the 2020 litigation, the Biden administration in 2021 stepped in, halting this most recent round to give parties time to negotiate an agreement.

The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, reached in 2023, paused litigation for five to 10 years. It also mandated the government review the recent environmental impact statement, conduct new research and potentially produce a supplement to the document that would change the government’s stance on issues like Snake River dam removal.

“To get a stay in that litigation, we agreed to some things,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Tom Conning said. “And one of those things is environmental compliance.”

That compliance could lead to a supplemental environmental impact statement or the slightly less significant step of a supplemental environmental assessment. Or it could lead to nothing at all.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a supplemental environmental impact statement is required when an agency “makes substantial changes to the proposed action that are relevant to its environmental concerns” or when “there are substantial new circumstances or information about the significance of adverse effects that bear on the analysis.”

In a follow-up email, Conning said the agency is looking at things that have changed since 2020, specifically citing:

• Changes to the Columbia River system’s 14 federal dam and reservoir projects
• Species that have since been listed by the Endangered Species Act
• Changes in Columbia River flows from the pending Columbia River Treaty with Canada
• Newly published research

When asked if the agencies are considering Snake River dam removal, Conning said the dams are a part of the Columbia River system, but the agencies are “looking at the system as a whole and not necessarily individual projects.”

Earthjustice lawyer Amanda Goodin said her organization expects to find out what approach the agencies are taking through a notice of intent from the trio by the end of this fall.

It’s unclear how the January transition from the Biden administration to another Trump presidency will affect the agencies’ decision-making. Goodin said it will likely have some effect, but the specifics remain to be seen.

She noted removing the Snake River dams — when combined with significant investment in areas like Lewiston, Idaho, that would lose local revenue — would be a win for environmentalists, Native nations and the region’s economy.

But Goodin added that “decision documents that came out of the last Trump administration showed no interest in that kind of win-win solution. And, in fact, (they) were pretty fine condemning salmon to extinction.”

The Corps’ Conning said the change in administrations will not change anything the agency is doing.

“Right now, we don’t (expect) basically any impact,” he said. “It’s not like we can really speculate at this point what the incoming administration or the next Congress might do.”

Republicans, who will control the presidency and both the chambers of Congress after January 2025, have opposed Snake River dam removal.

During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump showed a clear preference for cutting environmental protections for fish and ecosystems, instead increasing the amount of river water available across the West for farming.

That’s a stance he doubled down on while campaigning this summer, The Columbian reported in October.

To Goodin, the stakes of the federal agencies’ potential action could not be higher — or more time-sensitive.

“The science has made clear that we are in an extinction crisis and that we really have to act with urgency here if we don’t want to lose some of these (salmon) runs,” she said. “We don’t really have time for half-measures. We don’t really have time for inaction.”

“And if the federal government decides to not live up to its obligation and not to keep moving forward with the agreement,” she continued, “then anything’s on the table — anything that we can do to buy the fish more time, anything that we can do to keep this moving forward.”

Whatever the agencies decide on Snake River dam removal, Goodin acknowledged that the issue will ultimately have to be decided by Congress.

Seattle Times: What will a switch from Biden to Trump mean for the Columbia River? 

"We're ensuring that this thing is moving," Shannon Wheeler, chair of the Nez Perce tribe, said at an online forum Wednesday.

By Jennifer Yachnin | 11/21/2024

Tribal officials advocating for the removal of four Pacific Northwest dams to boost beleagured salmon and steelhead populations say the effort could remain on track, even with Republicans opposing the effort prepare to take control of the White House and Congress.

Shannon Wheeler, chair of the Nez Perce tribe in north-central Idaho, said optimistic that efforts to remove the four Lower Snake River dams will continue, however slowly.

“It always has been difficult. It isn't going to change,” Wheeler said Wednesday at an online forum sponsored by the tribe’s Salmon Orca Project.

Tribal advocates scored a victory in late 2023, when the Biden administration announced a $1 billion settlement agreement in a long-running federal lawsuit over hydropower operations on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

The agreement between the federal government and the Nez Perce, Yakama, Warm Springs and Umatilla tribal nations, as well as the states of Oregon and Washington, includes funding for multiple studies on the impacts of removing the Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite hydropower dams.

The studies will examine how to ensure water supplies for crop irrigation, transportation, and recreation, as well as other sources of energy production.

Only Congress has authority to actually order the dams’ removal, and Republicans, including Oregon Rep. Cliff Bentz, have vigorously opposed the idea.

Wheeler — who along with other speakers didn't mention President-elect Donald Trump by name, or any other officials, aside from praising Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) —noted that progress on restoring fish populations has long been a complex process decades in the making.

“We're ensuring that this thing is moving,” Wheeler said. “Sometimes it may seem like it slows, but even if it moves an inch, that's enough.”

Wheeler said that tribal leaders would focus on education efforts about the salmon populations, as well as work with federal, state and local officials and environmental groups to address how to best move forward with dam removal and restoration efforts.

“Over the next five to 10 years, let's ensure that the studies that are being done in Washington are completed and our voices are being heard through that process,” Wheeler said.

“I can still see the end, the goal line here, and it gets tough in the red zone,” he added, utilizing terminology used in football when a team is near the goal line.

Kayeloni Scott, who serves as executive director of the Columbia & Snake River Campaign, a coalition of 40 organizations, said Washington and Oregon would also need to serve as leaders on the project.

“Just because our trajectory might be shifting a little bit, doesn't mean the timeline of the salmon has changed,” Scott said. “We're still looking at two life cycles before we're in serious, serious trouble, which means eight to 10 years.”

E&E News: Proponents of breaching dams see opportunities in Trump era