Good Stewards Network
Join Christians Standing Up for Gray Whales in the Pacific
Together We Can Protect God’s Creation
Among God’s wonderful creations, few are as awe-inspiring as the gray whale — a creature that was pulled back from the very edge of extinction due to commercial whaling in the 1900s. Today that same creature is washing ashore dead in numbers scientists have never recorded before. And the trail leads straight back to a warming world we were charged to keep.
The eastern North Pacific gray whale population has been cut nearly in half in under a decade — from roughly 27,000 animals in 2016 to about 13,000 by last year's count. This year alone, 145 gray whales have already been found dead on beaches. Last year, 179 washed ashore.
Furthermore, annual gray whale calf births have collapsed from about 1,600 to just 85 — the fewest ever recorded since counts began in 1994. That is not a bad year. It is a near-total failure of new life within a single generation.
The root of it is a warming Arctic. As sea ice melts earlier each spring, the algae that grows beneath it thins out — and with it, the shrimp-like crustaceans the whales depend on. The whales arrive at their feeding grounds and find the table nearly bare. Weakened by hunger, many grow disoriented, wander into shipping lanes, and are struck and killed by boats — a second, human-made wound laid on top of a changing climate.
As Christians, we are called to steward God's creation and to defend the life within it. From the very beginning, the Lord placed us in the garden "to tend and keep it" — not to consume it, not to look away as it withers, but to guard it as something entrusted to our hands.
And yet the gray whale has no voice but ours. That is why we are calling on our leaders to restore Endangered Species Act protections for these animals before it is too late — a step that would give them a real chance to survive this crisis. Join us in lifting up the leaders who hold the power to act, and in teaching our children that every living thing, from the sparrow to the great whale, carries the fingerprint of its Maker.
A Petition for the Stewardship of God's Creation
As Christians, we are charged with defending God's creation; as Americans, we have been entrusted with vast lands and oceans to steward. Right now, gray whales off our Pacific coast are in grave danger. Their numbers have been cut nearly in half in under a decade, and a record number now wash lifeless onto our shores. We pray that our leaders will act before it's too late — restoring this magnificent species to the Endangered Species Act list and refusing any action that would harm the fragile habitats the whales depend on. We must protect God's creation from sea to shining sea.