Oregon Wants to Kill More Endangered Sea Lions to Save Endangered Fish

[Judi Lynn]

Leslie Nemo

Apr 7 2018, 9:00am
A case study in the unforeseen consequences of well-meaning attempts at wildlife conservation in the Pacific Northwest, so protective as to be counterproductive.


Every day at 6 AM, a team of Oregon Fish and Wildlife officers check the traps. The cages encircle docks—sea lions love sunbathing—throughout the Columbia River Basin, at a strategic point just before the Willamette Falls, a natural feature in a tributary of the same name. If a trap door is closed, officers barge the sea lion out of the river and wrangle the agitated mammal into yet another trap, before driving it 230 miles to the California coast, only to have the same sea lion virtually beeline back to the same stretch of the Columbia.

At which point, the cycle begins all over again.

For a decade now, OFW has been caught in this capture-release-recapture loop of trapping sea lions. Hauling a 500-pound pinniped from its watery perch can be dangerous, though it’s one of the only intervention strategies the wildlife team has had since the sea lions first moved into the Columbia River to pursue steelhead trout and Chinook salmon. The mammals are considered endangered and have extremely strict kill regulations, but those two fish types they’re eating through, the trout and salmon, are likewise both threatened and endangered species. If the trap-release-retrap circle continues, OFW thinks there’s a high likelihood one of those fish populations will go extinct.

It’s a case study in the unforeseen consequences of well-meaning attempts at wildlife conservation, so protective as to be counterproductive. As more and different kinds of nonnative sea lions have arrived in the Columbia River Basin over the years, state, federal, tribal, and animal rights organizations remain locked in negotiations over legal precedents and predicted ramifications. Things came to a head at the end of January when the governors of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon asked Congress to lift some restrictions on the lethal removal of the endangered sea lions.

More:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxzdb/oregon-sea-lion-kills-endangered

[safeinOhio]

1. Could it be......

An invasive species is a plant, fungus, or animal species that is not native to a specific location (an introduced species), and that has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy or human health.[1][dubious – discuss]

[CentralMass]

2. Thank you for posting another great science article.

I'm forwarding to my daughter who is a marine science major.

[NickB79]

3. Are the sea lions moving north due to a warmer climate?

If so, the only way to protect the fish is to transplant them to rivers further north as well. Anything less will ultimately fail.

[hunter]

4. Need more orca?

Do not watch if videos of predators doing what predators do upsets you.

Nature is brutal.