||| FROM KING-TV 5 |||
SEATTLE — A longtime federal scientist is raising concerns about the future of Southern Resident Killer Whale recovery efforts. This comes after she stepped away from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) after a 25-year long career.
Lynne Barre spent more than two decades at the agency and was one of its top voices on orca recovery. She played a key role in writing the federal plan to protect the endangered Southern Residents.
“We wrote a recovery plan for a roadmap of how to address the threats to this endangered species,” Barre said.
Earlier this year, Barre chose to take voluntary early retirement. She said her decision was driven by concerns about the direction of the Trump administration and the potential risk of being fired, as the agency moved to reduce the federal workforce.
“There’s also an effort to relabel some federal employees as more political,” she said. “And that means they could potentially, you know, I could be fired for political reasons, and that was a bigger risk than I was willing to take.”
Barre said the tone within the agency shifted drastically in recent months, particularly in how federal employees and scientific work were described, creating a hostile environment.
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