Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Columbia Salmon killing seals

If people cared as much about the salmon, as they do grammar, sea lions and seals upstream of tide water would all be dead! Just my opinion, for what it is worth.

Midol shortage

That’s your headline.

Sea lions in the Columbia system have reached as far upriver as Lewiston, ID on the Snake River. Take a look at your map on how far that is.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Yep, yep, and yep.


I clicked wondering how. Mercury, other poisons from dams...Oh, My!

Maybe if I had mastered English and typing I could be a critic.
But, I just hope spell check covers me butt for this sentence.

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.

Damn near fell out of the chair with that one, Thanks for the zinger!

I believe Lynda has some bogus numbers, about the feedback recieved. Fake news on her part!

Just like wolves this is one of the things where real outdoors should do what needs to be done , deSeal whenever possible .

Wonder how Elmer Keith would have handled them?

Interesting.

"natural habitat" in one sentence then

"dams that create bottlenecks that make the fish easy pickings"


That's some smart writing there.

There's nothing natural left about the Columbia and Snake systems anymore. An argument might be made for the section downstream of Bonneville Dam, but even that has been altered in many ways.

At least the article pointed out that there has been ongoing lethal removal of certain CA sea lions. Different set of rules for the Stellar's that moved in a few years back.

Having worked for 7-8 years on that system, I'd hazard a guess that optics and safety are two big reasons their not going to use firearms. Optics because it will be readily apparent to the ninnies that someone is shooting "seals". Safety because one stray shot causing injury, death, or even property damage to a home, tug boat, barge, or a homeless shanty would end that program quickly.

Don't be so fast to blame "the biologists". Again, having worked there for a bit, many (if not most? ) of the salmon and sturgeon biologists realized the need to lethally remove some animals. Politics what they are, their wishes and biological facts and opinions are not always implementable.

I always hoped they'd just get some of the Native folks to get to harpooning some. Bring down some of the seal/sea lion eating folks from up North if they have to, the Columbia tribes did not seem to have those critters as a big part of their diets.

Someone mentioned boot leather. Seems I've heard of some nice water/snow proof mukluks being made from them skins. Of course, that would be too much for the ninnies to accept.

Expect lawsuits to delay these killings.

That's probably a debate issue for another thread.......

Go back to working on your GED. You're at least showing some progress in maturing, so keep striving.

When can we buy tags? And will a Louisville slugger be a legal means of take?

You might try that on a baby but you might want to think twice about trying to club as 2000lb adult male.

Too bad every native I've come across has been a terrible shot. Running 270 ammo through a 280 and wondering why they can't hit anything......

That must be an Alaska thing. Natives around here shoot very well.

So this sea lion came 17 miles upriver to our fish counting station on the Sapsuk (Nelson) River, some decades ago. In just a few minutes I watched it make repeated passes through a deep pool where salmon were holding. It killed at least 50 that I saw. Because it could. Last I saw of that lion it was headed back down to sea.

When I turned the .338 in at the end of the summer, the box of shells was down to 18. I used one to kill a caribou for camp meat, off my license. Must have lost the other one on one of my walks.

I would think tranq guns with lethal overdose loads would be an option for this cull. Dispose of therm as they wash up, if needed. Bears and coyotes gotta eat too. Well maybe that wouldn't be a good idear after all with the residuals...

The whole thing is a farce. There are well over 10,000 seals/sealions in the Columbia system. They say they can kill 500 over a 5 year period. The reproduction rate far exceeds that. This is just to appease people making them think something is being done. It won't affect the salmon kill in the least.

I think you are right.

Ours do too, with the right ammo. They do seem to be very recoil shy tho.

There are idiots, fools, and incompetents in any group of people.