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| © Bethanie O'Driscoll |
These sea lions sunning themselves by Bonneville Dam
don't know what the government has in store. |
The Humane Society of the United States remains strong in its opposition to a plan approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service that will allow state agents to shoot as many as 85 California sea lions each year at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River straddling Oregon and Washington starting March 1, 2009.
The agency claims that sea lions must be killed to prevent them from eating their normal average of 0.4 to 4.2 percent of salmon returns this year, even though both Oregon and Washington recently proposed to increase fishing quotas for the third year in a row. The increase allows fishermen to kill up to 13% of the ESA-listed spring Chinook in light of anticipated record high salmon returns for 2009.
"The claim that sea lions must die to protect salmon is entirely bogus, and more than a little disingenuous," said John Balzar, HSUS senior vice president of communications. "If the government really thought salmon are so critically imperiled that we need to start slaughtering their natural predators, they wouldn't allow fishermen to catch three times more fish than sea lions are eating."
While birds, other fish, sea lions, and fishermen all kill salmon, the real threats to salmon recovery come from adverse impacts to their habitat including loss of quality spawning habitat and dams blocking their normal migratory routes up and down the river.
The plan to shoot sea lions coincides with estimates that this spring's Columbia River salmon run is likely to be the third largest in almost 30 years, with almost 300,000 fish expected to return to the Columbia.
The HSUS has appealed the lethal permit that was granted to the states to the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals. The case is expected to be heard later this year.
Facts:
Five of the spring-salmon runs in the Columbia are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. These adult salmon swim up the Columbia River—and frequently past several dams—to spawn.
A federal recovery plan for the salmon identified the two greatest threats to salmon recovery as poor survival of juvenile fish and impacts from salmon hatchery programs.
An environmental assessment by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that other sea lions were likely to take the place of those who are killed so they were unable to provide a reliable estimate of the number of fish that might be saved by killing sea lions.
The dog-like faces and antic behavior of sea lions have made them a public favorite. Capitalizing on this positive public perception, the National Marine Sanctuaries Program chose a California sea lion nicknamed Sanctuary Sam as their mascot.
The states originally proposed killing California sea lions in the fall of 2006. In the fall of 2007, the National Marine Fisheries Service convened a task force to review the States application to kill sea lions. The HSUS was represented on the task force and opposed approving the states' plan. Read the full opinion [PDF].
