Stop feeding salmon to the lions

Congress should give Northwest states permission to kill sea lions feasting on endangered salmon  

April 19, 2007

Portland Oregonian

If the Northwest had huge and healthy runs of salmon, maybe it could afford to keep watching California sea lions munch on thousands of chinook salmon at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River .

But the Columbia basin is home to at least 12 stocks of threatened and endangered fish, including wild spring chinook. This region cannot sit back and let nature take its course -- even if you want to argue that there's something natural about a sea lion camped on a fish ladder, chewing up salmon.

The states of Oregon , Washington and Idaho and Columbia basin tribes have asked Congress for permission to kill some of the federally protected sea lions feasting on spring chinook. Congress should grant permission, and it should do so now, not a year from now.

This has gone on long enough. For years, growing numbers of sea lions have congregated below Bonneville, eating more and more salmon, and when the chinook are scarce, feeding on the large sturgeon that swim there, too.

Fish and wildlife managers have tried everything they can short of killing the most persistent salmon predators. They've tried hazing the lions with firecrackers, rockets and underwater speakers. They've tried chasing them away with the sounds of killer whales. They've tried rubber buckshot.

None of it has worked. Sea lion numbers keep growing. So does the damage they are doing to salmon. The current estimate is that sea lions are taking 3 percent to 4 percent of the spring chinook run -- or 3,000 to 4,000 fish.

That may not sound like much. But this region regularly spends tens of millions of dollars on salmon restoration measures that promise much less than a 3 percent increase in the return of adult chinook salmon.

No one is arguing that sea lions are to blame for the demise of Columbia salmon and steelhead. No one contends that killing sea lions is the only, or the ultimate, solution. The region's fish runs collapsed because of dams, overfishing and habitat destruction. Even today, all these are much more significant causes of salmon mortality than sea lions.

But the federal government, the states and electric ratepayers already are spending something on the order of a billion dollars a year on Columbia salmon recovery. Fishermen are regularly kicked off the river when fish returns are low. Treaty tribes are being left without salmon.

Meanwhile, the number of sea lions keeps climbing. Today there are more than 300,000 California sea lions along the Pacific coast, up from less than 10,000 when Congress approved the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

They are great animals -- smart, strong and even beautiful in their own way. But there is a collision of wildlife values here, and the salmon are clearly losing. It makes no sense, none, to sit by and let a growing number of sea lions help push Columbia salmon to extinction.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material  herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed  a  prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and  educational purposes only. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Source:  http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/

editorial/117694410355170.xml&coll=7