Highlights from the Cascadia Scorecard's wildlife index.

The score

69 years behind targets

The trend

Modest gains, led by wolves and salmon

Soundbite

The five wildlife species tracked by the Scorecard average only 18 percent of their historical abundance.

Picture it

Maps: Wildlife species in the Northwest, past and present
Chart: How each species is doing

2007 results at a glance

• Wolves have staged a remarkable comeback in Montana and Idaho in recent years, while sage-grouse and chinook salmon have improved modestly. But orcas and Selkirk caribou have struggled.
• So diminished are these species from historical levels that, at current rates of progress, it would take 69 years to restore them to Scorecard targets.
  
  

2007 results in detail

	Southern resident orcas that inhabit the inland seas of Washington and British Columbia suffered a setback this year, following an increase in population in recent years. By year’s end, only 86 orcas remained in the southern resident population, roughly one-third of their historical abundance. [Read more]
	Gray wolves in Idaho and Montana were hunted to extinction in the Rockies, but have been reintroduced. They are flourishing and helping to re-balance their native landscapes. By 2006, biologists estimated that there were more than 1,250 wolves in the US Rockies. [Read more]
	Mountain caribou of the Selkirk Range, a remote region in northeast Washington, northern Idaho, and southern BC, are the last remaining caribou to visit the continental US. Their continued existence hinges on repairing fragmented landscapes. [Read more]
	Greater sage-grouse in Oregon, known for their flamboyant breeding displays, is one of the best indicators of the health of the Northwest’s interior sage deserts. Roughly 47,000 of the birds remain in Oregon. [Read more]
	Chinook salmon numbers in 2006 were stronger than in 2005, with more than 200,000 fish migrating up the Columbia River. However, natural population dynamics mean that counts vary each year, so only long-term monitoring can reveal meaningful trends. [Read more]

Solutions: Restore natural ecosystems

Preserving and restoring native wildlife populations requires policy choices that provide the animals with the conditions they need to flourish.

In some cases this simply means habitat conservation, such as setting aside relatively undisturbed land for sage-grouse or caribou.

But in cases like salmon and orcas, where their marine ecosystems are intimately intertwined with human activity, the fixes involve broader and costlier fixes such as restoring critical salmon spawning areas and installing new infrastructure to manage stormwater runoff.

The good news is that restoring the region’s natural landscapes would bring a host of benefits to Cascadia’s people as well as to its wildlife.

More information:
Cascadia Scorecard 2007 sources
Cascadia Scorecard 2007 press kit
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If you have a comment about the project, please email researcher Eric de Place, at eric@sightline.org.