This touching 4 minute video and text about the work the San Juan Community Rights citizens group is doing to prevent more preventable deaths of the southern resident pod of the Salish Sea orcas can be accessed HERE.
— Beginning of text: There was rejoicing at the birth – the first in the family in more than three years. But within a half-hour, the joy turned to sorrow, and for more than two weeks this past summer we watched and mourned with her, as she carried her dead infant. For a thousand miles, she carried the tiny body, growing weaker herself. On the 17th day Orca J35, dubbed “Tahlequah” – the Cherokee word for “just the two of us” – by the media, released her baby to its watery grave.
Kai Huschke watched and grieved, too.
“This is preventable!” he insists.
Huschke is an organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. For the last year he’s been working with local San Juan Islands residents through their group, Community Rights San Juan Islands, to secure legal rights for the Salish Sea.
“That means changing how we see Nature. It means seeing Nature not as a ‘thing’, seeing Nature not as property, but seeing Nature as actually having rights,” he explains. “We as people have to defend the Rights of Nature, the natural ecosystems, the natural communities.” MORE…