California Sea Lions Face Lethal Removal in Pacific Northwest

Please Take Action to submit comments against killing marine mammals by Feb. 19th

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has proposed a plan that would allow Washington and Oregon to kill (by lethal injection or shooting) as many as 85 California sea lions each year at the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, ostensibly to prevent the disappearance of wild salmon from the region. However, this approach is fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons, the main one being that sea lions are only responsible for eating between 2 and 4 percent of the salmon runs. Meanwhile the dam itself  kills 2-16 percent of the adult fish, and "harvest" by fishermen is allowed at levels between 4-17 percent each year, so killing sea lions will do virtually nothing to help salmon populations recover.

Meanwhile, habitat degradation and threats to the survival of juvenile fish are the two greatest problems facing the salmon, neither of which will be solved by killing sea lions. In fact, the NMFS has presented no evidence that killing sea lions will do anything to save the fish, admitting in their Environmental Assessment that they cannot project "a reliable estimate of any decrease in pinniped predation and corresponding increase in salmonid survival."

Rather than offering a legitimate program of action based on scientific study that will actually save the salmon, the NMFS preferred plan to kill sea lions will do little more than allow fishermen to vent their frustration at seeing fish being eaten. Perhaps even more damaging to the conservation cause, it will give the public the impression that something is being done about saving the salmon while in reality their very survival remains at stake.

What You Can Do:

Please Take Action to oppose the NMFS proposal today. Note that the public comment period closes on Tuesday, February 19th.