A mere 30 years too late, this morning on Fox News, biologists have now determined they are going to have to start killing pinnipeds if they want to have any chance of saving salmon populations in the Columbia system.
The same thing that commercial and sport fishermen have been tearing their hair out over for decades. One can only wonder if it's going to take another thirty years to get to the other dozen major river systems, on the west coast. Meantime the idiots in charge run around screaming, "climate change, global warming, rip out the hydro-power dams". No one knows how many salmon a seal will kill, like wolves, they kill for sport, but it's pretty clear that each female salmon lays from 2000 to 5000 eggs. Apparently biologists don't take math courses in college.

How can they when they are being indoctrinated to push other agendas?

The way I first read this, I was assuming it was saying the Salmon are killing the seals...

Maybe I need to take up drinking coffee if I am going to keep waking up this early in the morning...

Oh, the tragedy of the missing little hyphen. The thread title as written means Columbia salmon are killing seals. What you meant was the opposite. It should have read "Columbia Salmon-killing Seals." Or better yet, "Columbia Seals Are Killing Salmon".

I only clicked because I wondered how salmon kill seals.

Still...you gotta admit I'm doin' fair for somebody that left high school before the diplomas were handed out.

That title threw me also, but I just started my first coffee and thought it was kind of weird. But I'm still not fully functional yet.

Sea lions, not seals. We fish the lower Umpqua and the seals are thick. We lost a couple of salmon last year to seals.

I know, after that screwup, I'll start an new thread, titled, "Seals-eatum heap salmon". Followed by main text, "white doctor man say killem seals (or sea lions, your preference).

It's called clickbait.

Consider this a lesson in modern journalism.

Like... Let's eat, Grandma not Let's eat Grandma.

You wanna help Jack off the mule?

Damn, I guess I’ll have to forego grilled salmon if it’s toxic enough to kill seals.

No, Mr. Meoff doesn’t need any help.

The story I read said that firearms will not be permitted so I assume some very expensive inhumane trapping, lethal injection method will be implemented. Which will create a public outcry and a court order to stop the killing. What would be wrong with a rifle bullet and let them wash out to sea? I've heard the Stellar Sea Lion can weigh over a ton. How do you properly dispose of a sea lion?

Me too!

This thread is worthless without pics of salmon killing seals.

The Marine Mammal Act was as stupid as the Wild Horse and Burro Act, passed by bleeding hearts with no thought about what would happen when their efforts worked too well. Both laws have caused extreme overpopulatons with no legal means of reversing it.

I can't find the figures at the moment but the pounds of salmon killed every day by sea lions in the Columbia are astounding, something like 50k a day IIRC.

It's a crying shame that the essential oils from pinnipeds don't make good boot grease...there is enough fire members demanding exotic boot greases to solve the whole dam(n) problem.

Yep

The ole dangling participle strikes again!

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.

Why is Jack offing the mule?

Was that sea lion eating just the bellies out of those fish? Common occurrence on the Columbia. Eat the fat rich parts, leave the carcass.

They do not state limits on sexes of the animals to be removed. Killing 500 bulls will do little. 500 cows would have a powerful effect.

Bears eating fresh salmon eat the skin, guts, and sometimes brain. They leave the rest for the birds. When they eat rotten salmon the eat the whole thing. They much prefer rotten.

Flintelock: Indeed this is to little and to late!
For just one instance the "sea lions" killed off both a wonderful native Chinook Salmon run in the Cedar River (just south of Seattle where I was born and raised and lived the first 49 years of my life) then decades later they (the "sea lions and seals"!) finally killed of the native and distinctly shaped Cedar River summer run Steelhead and the winter run Steelhead.
Yep to little and WAY to late in my experience/learned opinion.
Sad.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I might be mistaken. Might be the large sturgeon their eating the bellies out of.

Lots of times they grab the salmon by the belly, kill it and shake it into smaller pieces to eat. I've seen numerous salmon upriver (400 miles +/-) with bite marks, most of which are on the soft underside.

Lots of interesting videos on the web of them killing sturgeon, salmon, and lamprey .

Town natives are different from village natives IME. Worked with a couple that hated white people. Asked them if they knew how to speak russian and when they said no
I said why is that....

Easy the seals.

Sea lions aren't bulletproof. a 243 teaches them right

Exactamundo!

They shoot whiskey, heroin, meth....

Their sister...

A tranq gun, water and gravity would probably be all that's needed.
One not recovered is one not counted!

WDFW NEWS RELEASE
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
1111 Washington St. SE, Olympia, WA 98501
https://wdfw.wa.gov
August 17, 2020
Contact: Ben Anderson, 360-902-0045
WDFW, partners receive approval to expand removals of sea lions on Columbia River and tributaries
OLYMPIA – The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on Friday approved an application allowing the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and partners to expand a program to lethally remove sea lions preying on threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin.
WDFW, along with Oregon, Idaho, and six regional tribes, submitted the application in June 2019 after Congress passed an amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) in December 2018 allowing wildlife managers greater flexibility in determining when predatory sea lions may be lethally removed in areas where salmon and steelhead listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) might be present.
The new permit allows removals to take place on a portion of the Columbia River mainstem between the Interstate-205 bridge and McNary Dam, as well as any Columbia River tributary that includes spawning habitat of ESA-listed salmon or steelhead.
Sea lions congregate along the river in increasing numbers every year, including at bottlenecks like Bonneville Dam, where they consume thousands of salmon and steelhead annually.
The expanded removals could begin as early as this fall, said Kessina Lee, Southwest region director with WDFW.
"Sea lions traveling up the Columbia have had a detrimental impact on already-troubled salmon and steelhead populations, and this permit represents a significant step forward in our ability to give these fish species an immediate boost to increase survival while we continue working on long-term solutions," Lee said.
The Washington Legislature this spring approved additional funding to expand these operations to protect salmon and steelhead and provide benefit to the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales, which rely on salmon as a key part of their diet.
The additional funding was contingent on approval of the permit by NMFS.
"We don't expect this program to solve the problem on its own," Lee said, "but it represents one more tool in the toolbox as we continue working to also restore habitat, manage hatcheries and fish harvest, and develop hydropower policy."
Though managers have carried out lethal removals of California sea lions on the Columbia River for years, the new permit represents the first time Steller sea lions may also be removed.
Partners are unlikely to remove the total number of animals allowed for by the permit, which includes as many as 176 Steller sea lions and 540 California sea lions over a five-year period.
Both California and Steller sea lions have made strong recoveries in the years since passage of the MMPA, with California sea lions now numbering more than 250,000, along with more than 70,000 animals in the eastern population of Steller sea lions.
Other entities who submitted the application with WDFW include the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon (CTWSR), The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and the 3.6.D Committee, which includes ODFW, CTUIR, CTWSR, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community, and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians of Oregon.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is the state agency tasked with preserving, protecting, and perpetuating fish, wildlife, and ecosystems, while providing sustainable fishing, hunting, and other recreation opportunities.

Sea lions, seals, cormorants (amongst other birds), smallmouth bass, walleye, squawfish, channel catfish, blue catfish, gill nets (commercial and native), thousands of recreation fisherman, habitat loss on a huge scale, turning a free flowing river system into a series of lakes, amongst other issues have all contributed to declining salmon stocks on the Columbia/Snake rivers. I mean hey, what could go wrong?

Feed the great whites?

Browsing around, only about 15% of eggs ultimately produce free-swimming young salmon, so figure 300 to 750 young salmon going downstream per female. Out at sea the survival rate to adult is about one half of 1% such that even without the sea lions the salmon were operating at onliy about replacement-level fertility.

I’d buy a tag.

I'd buy a bunch

And as a fish person, who made their living dealing with fish, I have always found it interesting there is a bounty on a native fish, the pikeminnow/squawfish in an interest to keep the population primarily below 9", but no bounty on smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, crappie, walleye, channel cats etc which are all introduced non-natives to the Columbia system.

The politics of fishing is involved there, certainly not biology.

Also seems a very expensive fish passage structure around the Grand Coulee dam would reopen a tremendous amount of lost spawning/rearing habitat. Instead, they keep throwing money at other alternatives.

Interesting world of fish, that Columbia system is.

Nope - I don't think so. Could be tho - looked like it was just going through the school killing 3 - 5 or so each pass.

A hyphen (-) just in case nobody has brought it up, can be very helpful.

Really? No one's mentioned it so far.

Just wondering, how does a salmon go about killing a seal ?

A seal walks up to a salmon in a club....wait, something's not right.....

A salmon walks up to a seal with a club??

I had no idea when I posted this stupid thread, that I would shunned, belittled, castigated, made jest of over a gawd damned hyphen. But, you ya-hoos have-made-a-believer-out-of-me. If- you don't hear-from-me, I-am-in-seclusion-at-an-undisclosed-location. Under-going-therapy-and-counseling.
Hyphen, defined as: "a membrane in the vagina" etc. OK-I-got-it.