From the Olympian:
Puget Sound’s web of life is in trouble, with 40 marine invertebrate, fish, bird and mammal species listed as threatened or endangered on state and federal lists, or candidates for listing.
Assessments of all known species in Puget Sound suggest nearly 1,000 are imperiled, or about 14 percent of all critters large and small that call the Puget Sound basin home.
“We may be approaching a tipping point on Puget Sound,” said Nisqually tribal elder Billy Frank Jr., a co-chairman of Gregoire’s Puget Sound Partnership. “The salmon and orca are telling us that Puget Sound is sick. We have to start turning things around now before we lose forever everything we value about the Sound.”
