Earlier this month, the U.S. House Committee of Natural Resources held a hearing on sea lion management on the Columbia River. According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, “Columbia River salmon and steelhead face a serious threat from sea lions that have learned to consume these fish at predation hotspots such as dams, fish ladders, and natural pinch points in the river and its tributaries.”
To combat the problem, state and federal agencies have tried a plethora of non-lethal options with limited success, including a dummy orca that went belly-up and arm-flailing inflatable men on docks. Additionally, officials have trapped and relocated sea lions from the Columbia, but those efforts haven’t proven successful, according to Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs for NOAA Fisheries Mr. Sam Rauch, who spoke at the recent hearing.
“We have moved them hundreds of miles away, and they do come back,” he said. “They are remarkably resilient, and they do know where their food source is. It is very difficult to encourage them to leave with anything less than force. At one point, we did try to find space in zoos and aquariums, but that rapidly filled up. So, there is no, in our opinion, currently better way to address predation other than lethal removal.”
The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 generally prohibits the killing of all marine mammals, and likely led to the overabundance of sea lions on the Columbia River and its tributaries. Since 2008, the federal government has authorized state agencies to lethally remove sea lions on the Columbia. In 2020, the feds passed a law that permitted agencies and tribes to trap and kill 540 California sea lions and 176 Steller sea lions. But at the recent hearing, lawmakers questioned why only 230 have been killed since then (the law was quietly reauthorized this fall).
According to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat representing a rural Washington District, the answer likely has to do with cost; her office estimates that the current “onerous” process of removing a single sea lion costs up to $38,000 per removal, which equals roughly $203 per salmon saved. To reduce costs—and more effectively remove more sea lions—Gluesenkamp floated a simple idea: holding a permit auction or lottery for people to participate in lethal sea lion removals.
“As the name implies, sea lions are a species that belong in the sea, not in our rivers,” she said. “I’ve been chewing on this for a while and hearing a lot from my community about this. I’ve had so many people tell me they would pay good money [to help remove sea lions].”
Larry Phillips, policy director for the American Sportfishing Association, spoke in support of this idea, noting that “folks would line up to participate in that.” In his full testimony, Phillips advocated for “streamlining” sea lion management in the Columbia Basin, while continuing other research and habitat work to help the anadromous fish runs.
“We must be honest: continuing to spend billions on recovery and continually restricting fisheries, without meaningfully addressing predation, will produce a predictable outcome – and it will not be recovery,” he said. “The sportfishing community cares deeply about conservation. We want future generations to fish for salmon across the Northwest. To achieve that, we must address all limiting factors, including marine mammal predation.”
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