Yes, it's merely coincidental. It just happens that when the government is going to make a decision on the approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline - which feeds oil onto a tanker shipping route that intersects Pacific humpback whale habitat - that the whale's protection status is downgraded.
Do we believe it is entirely coincidental? Not on one whale's life do we think that it is coincidental or a boon for the whales.
Proponents of the decision point to data that says the whales have increased in number, so that justifies the downgrading of their threatened status. Sigh. The problem with that logic is that the whales have had a fighting chance to recover precisely because their habitats were protected due to their threatened status. It's a bit like opening up the passenger pigeon hunting season again - perhaps that's a bad example, but you get the picture.
Biologists are certainly heartened by the whale population's slow increase - estimated at four per cent a year. But they also note that they can't predict what impact using the whale's habitat as a tanker freeway will have on their continued recovery. The simple fact is that huge oil tankers cutting through whale breeding grounds is not a marriage made in the natural world. And, of course, if there is a massive oil spill along the lines of the Exxon Valdez, it will all be a moot point.
We realize that the federal government has staked out a position that puts the economy above the environment and considers scientists to be an overrated source of intelligence - but surely someone in those vaunted halls of government has grandchildren.
Surely someone hopes that those grandkids can stand on a rocky shore in the far future and point to breaching whales in the ocean instead of oil tankers the size of football fields churning through the water? Perhaps not.
