||| FROM NEWSWEEK |||
Southern Resident orcas are facing an accelerating risk of extinction, a new study has found.
The study, published in Nature, reports that the population, which lives in areas across Alaska, Washington state, Oregon and California, is declining by one percent every year.
The killer whales are under threat for a variety of reasons, including a lack of prey. Orcas feast exclusively on chinook salmon which are declining in their home waters.
“Wildlife species and populations are being driven toward extinction by a combination of historic and emerging stressors (e.g., overexploitation, habitat loss, contaminants, climate change), suggesting that we are in the midst of the planet’s sixth mass extinction,” says the study.
“The invisible loss of biodiversity before species has been identified and described in scientific literature has been termed, memorably, dark extinction. The critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale population illustrates its contrast, which we term bright extinction; namely the noticeable and documented precipitous decline of a data-rich population toward extinction.”
There are only around 75 Southern Resident orcas alive today, making the situation dire. And this number seems only set to decrease.
