Why conserve Australia's killer whales?

 

Every year in Australia we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars studying a variety of whale and dolphin species, ranging from migrating humpback whales to resident coastal populations of dolphins. Some of these species are doing remarkably well from a conservation point of view, yet for some reason they continue to attract a significant amount of funding support while other whale and dolphin species' such as killer whales, beaked whales, offshore dolphins and other pelagic species are mostly ignored. So why is this the case? The first reason that comes to mind is the commercial value of the species. If there is a tourism value, we tend to want to look after that species, therefore funding for research and conservation is more readily available. Another reason may be that the species is relatively easy to study, meaning it either migrates close to shore or it might be resident to a location. But neither of these reasons speak to the true ecological value of a species. Every species on the planet has a role to play and is therefore 'valuable'. So what of these elusive species like killer whales and the pelagic cetaceans? Are they not as valuable or as worthy of conserving simply because they're "too difficult to study" or because they have "little commercial value" and what would happen if they ceased to exist? Unfortunately the answer to the latter part of that question is: We won't know unless we allow them to go extinct or we kill them off and of course by that time its too late to conserve them. It is interesting to note that the only location in Australia where a small amount of funds are directed toward killer whale research is a location where killer whales have a tourism value and they are relatively easy to locate. This small isolated location represents just a very small percentage (certainly less than 1%) of killer whale habitat, with an unknown percentage of the total population of Australian killer whales utilising it. We applaud the financial investment and work undertaken in studying the animals in this area and hope that there is a flow on effect that investigates the bigger picture that is, killer whales of Australia. 

The team at Killer Whales Australia believe that all living things on our planet should be conserved in order to keep a balance. Whilst our focus is the conservation of Australia's apex predator, we all partake in and support other projects studying a range of species from common dolphins to blue whales. We also believe that being a species that is highly mobile and elusive is not a reason to not study and attempt to conserve it...particularly an apex predator. In short, we should conserve killer whales because they are as important as any other species on the planet and play a key role in keeping the balance within marine ecosystems. We are now approaching our final week of crowd funding and are still well short of our target. If you agree that Australia's apex predator is worth conserving, please consider backing this project.

Thanks to all who have generously contributed to date.

The KWA Team

Image by David Donnelly and taken under Australian Commonwealth permit held by the Marine Information and Research Group (MIRG)