Thanks for your long post. I’m not completely convinced that a Knik Arm bridge is a bad idea – an EIS hasn’t been done as far as I know… I certainly don’t want to see Cook Inlet Belugas decline in population, but I also can look at the geography and demographics. Maybe if Alaska didn’t have those long winter nights the population increase wouldn’t make development attractive. All snark aside Anchorage has grown significantly since my son’s mother moved to Seward in 1988, and I’ve noticed a lot of growth since I started visiting after he joined her there in 1994.

I’m still thinking about the geography. Knik arm is a tidal mudflat and it seems unlikely to be a significant part of the Cook Inlet whales range… Then again I’ve personally seen whales in Turnagain Arm, and it is much the same type of habitat, although it has greater tidal variation.

I can attest to seeing fewer whales when driving from Anchorage to Seward in 2000 than I did in 1995, but that anecdotal evidence is pretty useless.

As I’ve been thinking and writing about Knik arm geography it occurred to me that when farm produce from Point MacKenzie needs to get to Anchorage it can travel by sea – the growing season is shorter than the ice bound season, and I’m with you that the people that live near Point MacKenzie can drive the extra 70 miles in the winter.

Beluga whales
Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles (290 km) from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska.
Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles (290 km) from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska.[122]

Palin has opposed, on economic grounds, the designation of the Cook Inlet beluga whale as an endangered species.[123] Palin cited state scientists who claimed that hunting was the only factor causing the whales’ decline and that the hunting has been effectively controlled through cooperative agreements with Alaska Native organizations.[124] Recent research states that hunting controls have halted the decline of beluga whales in Cook’s Inlet but that the population remains severely depleted and at high risk of extinction.[125][126] As governor, Palin allowed Chevron to increase the quantity of industrial waste it allows to flow into Cook Inlet waters.[127] Federal scientists do not attribute the decline in the Cook Inlet beluga population to human pollution.[125]

Here’s info that helps to answer the question.

The 350 Cook Island belguga whales are all that remain of a population that has crashed by almost 75% in the last twenty years..

Alaska’s Cook Inlet beluga whales are a unique group of white whales whose numbers have dramatically declined in the past two decades due to pressures ranging from pollution to increased ship traffic. Governor Palin opposes the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whales, citing the listing as a threat to oil and gas development, despite their genetic uniqueness and the fact that their numbers have decreased from 1,300 in the 1980s to about 350 today.

Anchorage Daily News reported:

Cook Inlet beluga whales in decline

Limiting subsistence hunt didn’t help; population continues to drop

By DON HUNTER
Anchorage Daily News

A new and gloomy federal assessment of Cook Inlet’s beluga whales projects a one-in-four chance the population could go extinct within 100 years, and better than a two-in-three probability the whales will vanish in 300 years unless something happens to improve the odds.

[snip]

The “status review and extinction assessment” by the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle says annual surveys of the Cook Inlet belugas suggest only a marginal likelihood that their numbers will increase, and a 65 percent chance the population will shrink.

The bad news comes as federal agencies are considering whether the Cook Inlet belugas, a genetically distinct population that does not intermingle with other beluga stocks, should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. That prospect is applauded by environmental and other groups that have petitioned for such a listing, but feared by Cook Inlet area local governments and agencies like the Port of Anchorage and the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, where officials say stronger protections for whales would mean costly restrictions on development.

A regional recommendation on an ESA listing should be out sometime this winter, said Brad Smith, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. A decision on whether a listing is warranted or not would be made in Washington, D.C., in the spring, followed by more scientific reviews and public comment.

Scientists believe about 1,300 belugas inhabited Cook Inlet in the 1970s and early 1980s; by the late 1990s, their numbers had dropped to an estimated 350, and the most recent published estimate, for 2005, put their numbers at 278. An “abundance estimate” for 2006 probably will come in at about 300, Smith said, but counts since 1999, when subsistence hunts all but ended, show no significant population growth.

[snip]

Smith said the outlook for Cook Inlet belugas might be even more dismal. The extinction assessment assumes only one whale a year will be lost to killer whale predation. If orcas kill more, extinction could come sooner than 100 years, he said.

Craig Matkin, a marine mammal biologist who contracts with the Alaska Sea Life Center and other agencies, said the extinction study shows federal scientists are recognizing what he and others have argued for a long time.

“I think this report is a turning point,” Matkin said. “There’s no doubt about it (extinction) if this decline continues … and that the decline is due to some other kinds of effects than Native subsistence hunts.”

Hobbs and others said a logical next step would be to turn the focus of research to what other factors are affecting the belugas.

“There’s a variety that have been suggested, from pollution from Anchorage and other municipalities to industrial waste runoff, street runoff,” Hobbs said. “We really don’t know. We haven’t been able to study the whales in a way that would allow us to determine that.”

[snip]

Matkin, however, said the assessment “is a good piece of work, and it needs to be taken very seriously.

“NMFS has very much shifted their view of what’s the problem, that it’s not just subsistence … Nobody’s really looked in any serious way at any of these other factors. Everybody was just crossing their fingers hoping it was a subsistence problem, and it’s been clear for several years that it’s not.”

Even Fox News got the concept:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — In the 1970s, there used to be about 1,300 beluga whales in Cook Inlet, delighting locals and tourists alike. Last year, the number was estimated at just 278.

Why their numbers are dwindling has scientists puzzled — and scared. The National Marine Fisheries Service is embarking on a status review to determine if the belugas need the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act.

A listing was rejected in 2000 because then it was believed that overharvesting was to blame. Seven years of strict limits on hunting have proved that theory wrong, said Lloyd Lowry, a professor of marine mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“There is something else going on,” he said Monday.

The status review will look at possible reasons for the decline. That includes changes in habitat, such as noise from shipping, recreational boating and pile driving. The noise could be interfering with the whales’ ability to locate each other and find food.

[snip]

Scientists also will look at development around the inlet, including the expansion of the Port of Anchorage. Waste discharges from the municipality will be considered, as well as the impact of oil and gas development.

“There are a lot of things we are looking at,” said Brad Smith, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. But so far, he said, nothing jumps out as a likely cause.

“There is no smoking gun,” he said.

[snip]….the population should be growing 2 percent to 4 percent a year, but it’s not, Lowry said.

“This population, according to pretty good survey data, is not growing at all,” he said.

One cataclysmic event — a large stranding in the inlet’s 20-foot tides, perhaps, or an oil spill or tsunami — could push the remaining whale population over the edge, said Lowry.

“Having a small population for a long time is very risky,” he said. “If the decline continues we are going to get to very critically low numbers soon.”

Bridges in aquatic habitiat have numerous adverse consequnces: here are three.

1) During construction, both acoustic pollution and also dispersal of heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants which would otherwise remain sequestered in aquatic sediments.

2) Acoustic / vibrational (same thing, really) pollution from vehicle operation

3) Persistent organic pollutants / volatile hydrocarbons / heavy metals constantly released by normal vehicular traffic (and huge increases in point-source pollution when inevitable accidents occur).

Yet another adverse consequence for the Cook Inlet beluga whales would come from the very increased development (and hence increased human activity) of currently less-developed (or non-developed) lands within the watershed draining into the Cook Inlet the bridge would ensure.

it seems pretty obvious that some development in the area is going to occur, just because of the geography. Anchorage population has been growing a lot – the land on the north of Knik Arm is a developers dream.

The Cook Inlet beluga whales have been living in what we Americans now call Alaska since before recorded history. The recent history of European occupation and exploitation of Alaska is one of one corrupt insider deal after another. Yet the Cook Island beluga whales aren’t the property of the chamber of commerce crowd, Anchorage’s developers, or even the people of Alaska.

The whales are a national responsiblity, held in trust for the entire planet’s posterity: for a future extending millenia beyond the latest short-term development boomlet.

Wiping out any species — let alone a species of intelligent creatures like cetaceans — so human developers can go exploit more land is an obscene prospect.

As far as Don Young’s Way is concerned, the developers can go build in hell.