Social Media Toolkit: 17 Days, 17 Ways, #RememberTalequah

Purpose of this toolkit

We are launching this campaign to ensure that our community’s work on the Orca Recovery Task Force is in service of Tahlequah, the orca who lost her calf and held her for 17 days. That’s why we are urging people to honor this orca mother’s sacrifice and loss with taking 17 actions to help our southern resident orca pod. Together we can make a statement that a future without our orcas is not our future.

This campaign is designed to provide our partners, like OSA, the opportunity to use this social media toolkit to continue to educate and engage members, the public, partners, and the larger public around orca recovery, as well as drive action among our base to influence the Governor’s Orca Recovery Task Force process. The plan will engage audiences through a variety of organic and promoted social media tools and branded digital assets. All for OSA members to utilize.

This campaign will transition to the 2019 legislative session that begins in January at which time many of the recommendations will need to be acted upon.

How you can participate

  • Share social media posts on your organizational Facebook, Twitter and other social channels. Simply copy and paste the suggested social media posts and visuals below, or develop your own customized posts to share out the content, using the #RememberTahlequah
  • Send an action alert email to your members/supporters and/or email lists. A template is included below.
  • Edit the social media post template we created with a new tip each day. Feel free to add an additional hashtag and your organization’s logo to customize. Template: https://www.canva.com/design/DADG7Sy1VmQ/

What you can do

Copy and paste this text for social media posts on Facebook and Twitter and upload the visuals provided in the links below to boost visibility online. Use the #RememberTahlequah hashtag.

  • A future without orcas is not our future! Take 17 actions to honor Tahlequah’s 17 days of mourning. Together we can take collective action to recover Puget Sound’s iconic orcas #RememberTahlequah http://bit.ly/17ForOrcas
  • When orca moms mourn, we organize. Support Tahlequah and all of our southern resident orcas by taking part in our #RememberTahlequah campaign. Challenge yourself to complete all actions, stick to it and spread the word! http://bit.ly/17ForOrcas
  • Do you care for our Puget Sound orcas? Do you want to see them survive into future generations? Then join us in taking 17 actions for 17 days of mourning. Learn more here: http://bit.ly/17ForOrcas #RememberTahlequah
  • Be a good ancestor: fight to make put orcas’ plight front and center as the Orca Recovery Task Force meets and decides whether orcas can survive in Puget Sound. Learn more here: http://bit.ly/17ForOrcas #RememberTahlequah

Photos for posting (right-click on any image below to save it to your phone or desktop)

Square:

Take Action:

Editable Template: https://www.canva.com/design/DADG7Sy1VmQ/  

Email action alert

An email alert can provide your members and audiences with tangible actions to fight for orca protections and ensure their voices are heard through this public planning process. Feel free to use or adapt this one:

Dear [member/audience name],

This summer, the orca Tahlequah brought unprecedented attention to the plight of our endangered resident orca pod, by carrying her dead calf for 17 days while the world watched. Now the governor is calling on wildlife, water, tribal and land use experts to pull together a recommended plan for how to recover our iconic, endangered Southern Resident orca pod in Puget Sound.

The Orca Recovery Task Force must be in service of Tahlequah. That’s why we are urging people to honor this orca mother’s sacrifice and loss with taking 17 actions to help our southern resident orca pod. Together we can make a statement that a future without our orcas is not our future. You have an essential voice in this process.

Add your name to a comment letter urging the Task Force to stay the course and adopt a comprehensive list of bold actions for orca recovery.[Add your org’s action landing page LINK here].

Take action here: http://bit.ly/17ForOrcas  [To drive people to WEC’s 17 Days 17 Ways webpage]

Your action is part of our 17 Days, 17 Ways orca recovery emergency response to help Tahlequah and future generations of southern resident orcas.

Sincerely,

[Your organization]

Education & Outreach

Share one of these 17 Ways by creating your own custom meme. (Sign up for a free Canva account to create your own meme: https://www.canva.com/design/DADG7Sy1VmQ/) Pick an action that is most important to you and your organization, or create a series by sharing all of them. Create a custom meme by following this link and entering in your own text, or copying and pasting portions of the text below.

17 Days, 17 Ways

  1. Add your name to a comment letter on the draft report and recommendations for action between October 24-29 [Link coming October 25]
  2. Take the online comment survey now on the final list of recommendations for action. For your convenience we will provide a comment guide to navigate this online survey. Find the link at 17 Days, 17 Ways to Protect Southern Resident Orcas.   
  3. Make your voice heard by voting on November 6, 2018.
  1. Participate in Puget Sound Orca Recovery Day on November 10, 2018 – Join WEC staff for an Orcas Love Raingardens event in Tacoma. Organized by regional conservation districts, you can find more listings at Puget Sound Orca Recovery Day.
  2. Join our Sound Advocate Pods to build a network of orca advocates in communities around The Salish Sea that will be ready to engage and act at critical moments. Sign up for Sound Advocate Pods here.
  3. Call your state legislators at 1-800-562-6000. Tell them that you expect bold actions that increase the amount of food for orcas, decrease toxic pollution, reduce vessel noise and harassment from vessels, and decrease the threat of oil spills. Stay tuned for more during the 2019 legislative session.
  4. Support farmers, businesses, and local food providers that invest in salmon-safe practices. The lack of salmon is a statewide issue, so wherever you live, please seek out local food opportunities that respect salmon.
  5. Talk to your family, friends, teachers and neighbors about orcas.
  6. Orcas Love Raingardens. We get roughly 40″ of rain every year in the Puget Sound region, and we love it right? All that rain hits our roofs, yards, and driveways and runs off into the streets picking up everything along the way and end up in local streams and ultimately Puget Sound, unfiltered. A Rain Garden can help capture some of that runoff, collect it, and infiltrate it back into the ground before it has a chance to carry pollution to our local waterways.
  7. Reduce single-occupancy vehicle travel as toxic road dust from tire wear has been implicated in killing Coho salmon in streams
  8. Eliminate pesticides where you live as residential pesticides show up in streams every spring, when young salmon are most sensitive to toxics.
  9. Fix that oil leak in your vehicle as source of PAHs that cause problems in herring. Learn more at  Don’t Drip and Drive.
  10. Switch to non-toxic personal care products as drugs have been implicated in juvenile salmonid survival. See this orcas salmon infographic for more information.
  11. Reduce your speed on the water (if you are a boat owner) to 5 knots when you are close to an orca.  Recent studies have shown that faster boats are much noisier, thereby impacting orca’s ability to use echolocation to find food, communicate, and navigate.
  12. “Be Whale Wise” when you are on the water in a boat or kayak. Washington State requires all vessels to be 200 yards from an orca on either side and 400 yards away from the direction the orca is traveling.
  13. Get involved in a local habitat restoration project- Organizations across the region from Conservation Districts, to Salmon Recovery Lead Entities, to Salmon Enhancement Groups, to state and local agencies to local non-profits like EarthCorps are working every day to restore salmon habitat. They could use the help of volunteers like you.
  14. Create shoreline friendly fish habitat if you are a shoreline property owner to support salmon that supports orcas. If we restore our shorelines, there will be more forage fish such as sand lance and smelt, to support more salmon for the Orcas. Puget Sound has 7,500 miles of shoreline, 2,500 of which has been degraded by development.