“Anything for Don,” is how one colleague responded when I asked them to review this article. That phrase likely sums up how most of us lucky enough to be somewhere in his orbit felt whenever Don Baur asked for a favor. Sadly, on December 15, 2022, Don passed away. Although Don’s practice included many areas within environmental and natural resources law, for the purposes of this article I wanted to mostly focus on remembering his immense accomplishments in ocean and coastal law, and marine conservation.
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Don truly was a champion for both marine mammals and the marine environment generally. Even though Don left the Marine Mammal Commission in 1987, he never left marine mammals. Far from it. Don was an authority on the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Among his many professional achievements, perhaps his most famous was his work with Earth Island’s International Marine Mammal Project and the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation. For anyone unfamiliar with the 1993 film Free Willy, in short, it told the story of a boy’s bond with a captive orca (the eponymous Willy), which eventually leads to the boy breaking Willy out of captivity and releasing him back into the wild. The character of Willy was portrayed by the orca Keiko, who in fact was taken from the waters around Iceland in 1979 at the age of two. Keiko went on to be sold to aquaria in Iceland, Canada, and eventually Mexico, which is where he was held until 1996. Thanks to the film’s popularity, a movement began—spearheaded by the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation—to truly return Keiko to the wild. Don provided counsel to this movement and eventually helped to get Keiko released back into his native Icelandic waters in the late 1990s.
The International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute will remember Don as a great part of our successes and progress for whales and dolphins. His expertise and advice is sorely missed. RIP.
