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Hundreds of sea lions to be killed on Columbia River in effort to save endangered fish

Aug. 13, 2020 at 6:00 am Updated Aug. 13, 2020 at 8:49 am

A sea lion eats a salmon in the Columbia River near Bonneville Dam in North Bonneville, in Skamania County. On Friday, regulators are expected to lift some restrictions on killing sea... More

By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times environment reporter
Approval to kill up to 840 sea lions in a portion of the Columbia River and its tributaries over the next five years to boost the survival of salmon and steelhead at risk of extinction is expected from federal officials Friday.

The kill program has been in the works since Congress approved a change in the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 2018, allowing sea lions to be killed to reduce predation on salmon and other species.

The legislation for the first time allows the killing of Steller’s sea lions, in addition to California sea lions, and makes any of the marine mammals fair game within a nearly 200 mile stretch of the mainstem Columbia and its tributaries, between Bonneville and McNary dams. Previously, only California sea lions that had been determined to be problematic predators of salmon were allowed to be killed to benefit fish recovery.


The program is sure to be controversial; nearly 22,000 comments received during public review of the program were opposed and fewer than 200 were for it. But a task force in May overwhelmingly recommended approval of a kill program. Barry Thom, regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the West Coast Region, is expected to approve an application to implement the program, which was submitted in June of last year from state and tribal fisheries managers.

Kill operations could begin at Bonneville Dam as soon as this fall.

Kessina Lee, regional director for Southwest Washington for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is a member of the task force that voted yes. While work is ongoing to improve hatcheries, habitat, hydropower operations and reduce fishing impacts to benefit 13 runs of fish at risk of extinction in the Columbia and Snake Rivers, sea lions also are having an impact, she said.

In the highly altered Columbia and Snake, managers today find themselves killing protected marine mammals eating endangered salmon that in turn are crucial food for critically endangered southern resident killer whales.

“It is a wicked conservation problem,” Lee said.

For years, fish managers have tried nonlethal methods to haze and eliminate sea lions in the Columbia: Fire crackers and seal bombs, chasing them with boats, rubber bullets, screaming rockets, pingers, blasting orca whale calls, buckshot — and even long-haul relocation of salmon-munching sea lions didn’t work. They swam right back, as far as 100 miles in three days to keep chowing down.

The new program considerably ups the ante.

California sea lions have been killed for preying on salmon under previous control programs, but nothing at this scale has been implemented before. Under the new program, it’s open season for government fish managers under the permit on any sea lion anywhere in the kill zone, any time of year, and in any number, up to a maximum of 300 Steller’s sea lions, and 540 California sea lions within the five years of the operation.

Training and new equipment will be needed to handle Steller’s, which are more aggressive and bigger — up to 2,500 pounds — than California sea lions, Lee said.

Use of firearms is prohibited. Instead, a combination of trapping and darting would be used, with the kill administered by lethal injection of tranquilizing drugs. The intended goal is humane euthanasia.

But it won’t be pretty: poles, gaffs, squeeze traps, cages and more will be needed to isolate, contain, restrain, kill and remove the animals from what is their natural habitat. The sea lions are after all only doing what comes naturally, as they follow succulent salmon to dams that create bottlenecks that make the fish easy pickings.