Oregon’s farm industry is keeping a nervous eye on proposed state protections for orcas. It’s wary of new regulatory pressures on agriculture that ultimately won’t help the species.

State wildlife officials will consider granting endangered status to a distinct population of orcas off the Pacific Northwest coast, based on a petition submitted by environmental advocates.

The federal Endangered Species Act already protects these Southern Resident orcas, but a state-level listing would entail additional guidelines intended to ensure their survival.

Orcas feed on salmon reared in the state’s rivers — which has implications for irrigation, pesticide use and other agricultural practices affecting water quantity and quality.

The Oregon Farm Bureau is concerned about the petition moving forward despite also wanting these “amazing creatures” to achieve a “strong and healthy population,” said Greg Addington, the organization’s executive director.

“Unfortunately, we are skeptical that the petitioners’ real focus are the whales,” he said.

Activists ignore the “single biggest issue” confronting Southern Resident orcas, which is “a complete lack of genetic diversity,” and instead use the species as a “surrogate” to push for radical environmental objectives, Addington said.

“That agenda has much more to do with over-regulation of agriculture and a myopic focus on removal of dams as the solution to every problem,” he said.

Listing orcas as endangered may spur measures to protect salmon by increasing riparian buffers, riverside shade requirements, or stream flows, though it’s difficult to speculate at this point, said Lauren Poor, OFB’s vice president of legal and government affairs.

However, such regulations rarely acknowledge negative effects from other species, such as the seals and sea lions that compete with orcas for salmon, Poor said. Restrictions intended to preserve spotted owls haven’t succeeded, for example, because rival barred owls interfere with their recovery.

Unless “all the science” is accounted for, “we will never see the desired results and all we end up with is burdensome regulations that disproportionately impact specific industries and rural communities,” she said.

The petition to list orcas as endangered was filed earlier this year by the nonprofits Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Whale and Dolphin Conservation.

At its most recent meeting April 21, the state’s Fish and Wildlife Commission determined there’s enough scientific data to back the request, which means it will make a final determination within a year.

According to the petition, the Southern Resident population’s deaths have outnumbered births in recent years, leaving it with 73 orcas in coastal waters between Washington state and Northern California.

The environmental organizations say the main dangers facing the species are declining numbers of chinook salmon, potential oil spills and other ocean pollutants, as well as echolocation disruptions caused by ships.

The petition notes that Washington has already listed the population segment as endangered and has formed a task force to promote its welfare, while “Oregon has remained on the sidelines of orca recovery for too long.”

“While the state’s actions to recover salmon are a crucial component of orca recovery, those actions have not considered or integrated orcas,” the petition said.

If the endangered status is granted, state fish and wildlife officials will work with other departments to identify and close gaps in protections for the species, said Quinn Read, state policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“The primary purpose of state listing is to spur collaboration among state agencies with a role in the conservation of Southern Resident orcas,” she said.