PORTLAND, Ore. – That unmistakable smell of salt water was in the air, and
the last golden days of summer turned the Pacific into an expanse of blue.
Out beyond the breakers floated what looked like a log with paws sticking
up out of the water- a single log. It was a sea otter. The first cited on
the Oregon coast in 30 years when an effort to transplant animals in from
Alaska back in the 1970s failed.

There was both joy and a disconsolate tone in his voice. “The otters used
to be all up and down the coast,” said Siletz tribal council member and
cofounder of the Elakha Alliance, Dave Hatch, who holds a master’s degree
in Engineering.

Elakha means sea otter in Chinook jargon, the trade language of the Pacific
Northwest during the pre-contact period when thousands of otters lived off
the rocky coasts in shallow waters over lush kelp beds. Finally in 1911
after almost two centuries, the hunt for the sea otter was banned. Despite
the “500,000 hairs per square inch, or about 50 times more than today’s
most thickly-maned shampoo models,” as Northwest writer Bill Dietrich put
it – the 2,000 sea otters that had survived the era were saved. By then,
though, the elakha were gone from Oregon.

Hatch looked out to sea, his eyes on the otter. The brim of his cap shaded
his 50-something year-old face. “We need the otters back for our near shore
environment,” he said. “They’re what biologists call a keystone species.”

Under their protected status, sea otters can only be hunted by Alaska
Natives. Still the Siletz tribes and those with whom they are allied, want
the otters back to restore balance to a troubled ecosystem. Without the
otter, the kelp beds that formerly skirted the coast just offshore have
deteriorated under pressure from a booming sea urchin population, a source
of food for the otters.

“Every river in Oregon has a local ancient fish weir,” said Hatch. “And
those fish weirs don’t make any sense any more because the fish – salmon
and other small fish – that belong in those estuaries aren’t there any
more.”

Ecotrust, a broad-based Portland organization with the mission of building
what its calls a Salmon Nation, partners with the Elakha Alliance and is,
according to Hatch, “a perfect fit for Elakha because of Ecotrust’s focus
on helping people establish conservation economies. The environmental
groups tend to be hands off, and Native nations are not. The tribes want to
be part of the management system just like we’ve always been.”

Member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Ecotrust Director of
the Indigenous Leadership Program, Elizabeth Woody agreed. “We’re just very
hopeful that we can bring back the richness in the estuaries and the tidal
fish weirs. Reintroducing the otters will also change the dynamics of the
ocean so that the Coquille tribe can hold the canoe journeys up the coast
like they used to. These days, with the kelp beds so depleted, it gets too
choppy and the waves break all the way in.”

Only clusters of sea otter communities remained after the hunting ban in
1911 and until biologists sited a group of otters off the coast of Carmel,
Calif. in 1938, people thought the animals were gone from the lower 48.
Eventually, when the Atomic Energy Commission needed a place to relocate
otters before detonating atomic bombs on Kamchitka Island in the 1970s, the
animals were reintroduced in Washington, Oregon and Vancouver Island, an
effort that while meeting some success in Washington and Canada, failed in
Oregon.

Enter the Elakha Alliance, an organization formed in 2000 by
representatives from coastal tribes, Ecotrust, universities, and the Oregon
Museum of Science and Industry, along with the zoo and coastal aquarium.
The mission of the group is to “prepare the way for the reintroduction of
the sea otter to Oregon coastal waters.”

During the first year the group won the support of the Siletz tribes and
the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and received a provost’s award
from Portland State University that paved the way for the beginning of
genetic research. In 2001 the Siletz tribes provided $5,000 and the Oregon
Sea Grant put in an additional $10,000 for scientists at Portland State
University to analyze DNA from sea otter bones found in middens along the
coast. The first phase of the study has been completed and results indicate
Oregon otters were related to California populations, thus potentially
explaining reintroduction problems in the 1970s with northern sea otter
subspecies.

Armed with that information, the Elakha Alliance has proceeded with a
public education program. Hatch is a regular speaker and writer for
environmentally-based organizations and publications in the region. And
alliance members are working with Ecotrust to create a middle school
curriculum that focuses on the sea otter as a keystone species for the
Oregon coast. Plans for a book are on the table as well.

The appearance of the first sea otter in Oregon in decades this last summer
has the potential of fueling the Elakha Alliance’s mission. “After 100
years we finally have a wild otter willing to stay here,” Woody said. “You
know after 100 years it was just amazing. There’s something kind of magical
about actually having a sea otter floating out there on the Oregon coast.
Plus, sea otters are so cute that this animal might be a spark that gets
people to start thinking differently.”

Hatch continued, “The sighting of the one animal is encouraging. We hope
that’s just the beginning and want to see a national marine sanctuary
established so that whether the sea otters come back by themselves or via a
transplant program, they will have a refuge, a place where the kelp beds
have been restored and natural ecosystems are starting to function more
like they are intended to.”

Woody concurred, “If we can get the sea otters reestablished, we’ll have to
protect them. They eat a lot of food, and that’s why some fishermen don’t
like them. But you know humans create a scarcity mentality rather than an
abundance mentality. The tribes always thought of how generous the earth
was to us. Then, if we expressed our gratitude for what we received, it was
returned,” she said. “It’s a very high spiritual stance to feel cared for
and know you’re always going to have what you need. We’ve lost that with
the way everything’s been commoditized and over-exploited. The sea otter is
one of the joyful creatures, a creative being that could help bring society
back to a saner place if people are willing to listen.”

Woody and Hatch and their colleagues in the Elakha Alliance make no bones
about it. They want sea otters to resume their rightful place on the Oregon
coast. They want the animals taken off the “sin of omission list” and moved
into the middle of the discussion. They want the elakha to come home.