Your Vancouver Sun

Lawsuit threatened over delayed killer whale report
By David Wylie, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

OTTAWA - Environmental groups have sent a letter to the federal fisheries minister threatening a lawsuit if a strategy to save British Columbia's endangered killer whales isn't released by June 4.

The Canadian military is behind the latest delay, further stalling the release of a scientific report that's nearly a year overdue, said Lara Tessaro, staff lawyer for Sierra Legal.

She obtained a 10-page paragraph-by-paragraph proposed rewrite of the Resident Killer Whale Recovery Strategy from the defence department, but wouldn't say how she acquired the document.

"Some of the revisions, when you're familiar with the issues, are insidious," she said.

The letter to Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused the military of trying to downplay scientists' concerns over sonar threats to whales in B.C. waters. The military conducts sonar testing in the whales' habitat, often in joint operations with the U.S. navy, she said.

It's estimated there are fewer than 90 killer whales left in the province's southern waters.

Under Canada's Species at Risk Act, the report was required to be released by June 1, 2006. It was expected to identify habitat and conservation threats, and offer recovery recommendations, inspiring changes meant to help the species recover its numbers, she said.

The Georgia Strait Alliance and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee are involved in the suit.

Marilyn Joyce, marine mammal co-ordinator for the federal fisheries department, said the strategy is overdue because officials decided to work on more comprehensive strategies rather than proceeding quickly.

The report is expected to be posted sometime in June, she said.

"For killer whales here in the B.C. coast, it is a priority to get the (strategies) in place," she said.

Joyce said regions in the report identified as critical habitat - off the southern tip and the northern coast of Vancouver Island - and the effects of military sonar became sticking points after new information became available since the report was first drafted in 2005.

Fisheries has been working with several government agencies, including the military, to rewrite some sections of the report, she said.

"Our goal was to make sure we had the right (feeding) areas," she said. And, "In Canada, our sonars are less intense (than Europe and the U.S.)."

Fisheries is now finalizing the edits, she said.