The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently released a survey that showed the total number of marine species at risk within the Salish Sea doubled between 2002 and 2015. While the Discovery Islands are within the study area, the EPA study did not list specific locations. So Cortes Currents asked Max Thaysen, President of the Friends of Cortes Island, about the species of risk in our area.
The Friends of Cortes Island identified 33 Species of Risk that live on Cortes Island either part-time, or year round.
They have devoted specific pages on their website to 17 of these:
- Barn Swallow,
- Big-eared Bat,
- Blue Dasher Dragon Fly,
- Coastal Cutthroat Trout,
- Common Nighthawk,
- Great Blue Heron,
- Harbor Porpoises,
- Northern Goshawk,
- Northern Pygmy Owl,
- North Red-Legged Frog,
- Pacific Sideband Snail,
- Silver Spotted Skipper,
- Sooty Grouse,
- Steller Sea Lion,
- Threaded Vertigo,
- Western Screech Owl
- Western Toad.
There are species whose situation is improving. FOCI is collecting reports of Humpback Whale sightings.
Last April, FOCI and the HAKAI Institute partnered to organize a new citizen science sea star monitoring program on Cortes Island.
During the summer, FOCI asked Cortes Island residents to submit photos of any Great Blue Heron they saw. On Heron Day, September 5th, volunteers counted 15 Great Blue Heron.
In the course of our interview, Thaysen mentioned another species FOCI is observing. Forage Fish are not considered ‘commercially significant,’ but they are critical to many other lifeforms around Cortes Island.
Thaysen explained that, as a society, FOCI doesn’t have the resources for an in depth study of the species at risk in our area.
“I’m interested because the species extinction rate serves as a really good indicator of what’s happening on the planet,” he said. “Scientists fairly consistently come up with a rough estimate of our current species extinction rate on planet earth as being a hundred times greater than the normal extinction rate.”
Thaysen described the EPA study as “a pretty serious indictment,” on the scale of the “asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs.”
The report states, “34% of all birds and 43% of all mammals that use this ecosystem are threatened, endangered or are candidates for status assessments.”
This is worrisome because they are at the top of the food chain.
For example, the health of Southern Resident Killer Whales is important because they are apex predators.
“A healthy population of Southern Resident Killer Whales indicates the health of the whole food web beneath that. If they’re doing well: then salmon are doing well; herring are doing well; prawns and shrimp are doing well; the river systems are doing well and the ocean systems are doing well. Pollution is sort of under control. So what I think this report is saying, when it says that the number of Marine birds and mammals becoming at risk is particularly worrisome, is that they indicate the health of the ecosystem.”
There appear to be a lot of different human cognitive issues that make this hard for humans to recognize the problem. We tend to have what has been described as shifting baselines. Every generation assumes that the world it grew up with is ‘normal.’
“So if every succeeding generation accepts the world [they were born into], then no one generation ever notices that there’s a big problem,” said Thaysen.
That is one of the reasons he believes we need to rely on scientific methodology to assess the situation.
“Our innate built-in evolutionarily program self-defence mechanisms protect us from convenient threats that we observed with our senses. Then our body almost takes over. It creates the fight or flight response. We’re familiar with that,” said Thaysen.
He believes that human beings tend to take their cue from the larger society when it comes to more abstract threats.
Thaysen was surprised at the speed nations reacted to the pandemic, for example, while continuing “to not react from other, in my opinion, bigger threats.”
“So if we’re surrounded by people who don’t think that the current mass extinction event is a problem, then we will tend also to not believe that that is a problem and it will not trigger our concern for our alarm or our actions,’ he explained.
“And I find that in myself, I’m reluctant to come out of the closet and say that I’m extremely concerned about the current mass extinction because I don’t see or feel that concern from the people around me. So it makes me like a little bit of an outsider. It makes me feel a little bit ostracized, by my own self inflicted ostracization. I’m not sure that entirely always comes from people, but sometimes it does. It’s interesting to observe that and recognize how that’s going on and is a factor in that we have to work doubly hard against shifting baselines. Sociopolitical inertia in society keeps us from acknowledging the scientists.”
Top photo credit: Great Blue Heron by Veit via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)
Links of Interest
- FOCI’s ‘Species at Risk’ index page
- The EPA study ‘Marine Species at Risk’
- ‘Number of marine species at risk in Salish Sea more than doubled, report says’ (Cortes Currents)
- Articles about Species at Risk on Cortes Currents
Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:
To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:
- Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
- Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io